MY FATHER’S HOUSE by Joseph O’Connor has been shortlisted for the 2024 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. This is the second time Joseph O’Connor’s work has been recognised by the prize – with his acclaimed novel SHADOWPLAY also making the shortlist in 2020.
Honouring the achievements of the great Scottish historical novelist, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction is one of the UK’s most prestigious literary prizes. It celebrates quality, innovation and ambition of writing, provided the majority of the novel’s storyline is set at least sixty years ago. Previous winners include THE NARROW LAND by Christine Dwyer Hickey and THE GALLOWS POLE by Benjamin Myers.
The other shortlisted titles for this year’s prize are as follows: THE NEW LIFE by Tom Crewe, THE HOUSE OF DOORS by Tan Twan Eng, HUNGRY GHOSTS by Kevin Jared Hosein, IN THE UPPER COUNTRY by Kai Thomas and ABSOLUTELY AND FOREVER by Rose Tremain.
The winner receives £25,000 and shortlisted authors each receive £1,500. This year’s winner will be announced at an event that opens the Borders Book Festival in Melrose, Scotland, on Thursday 13th June 2024.
The judging panel commented: ‘The Walter Scott Prize judging criteria – originality, innovation, ambition, durability and of course quality of writing – are beautifully showcased in our 2024 shortlist. In addition, we have six novels as diverse in their subject-matter as in style of writing: an attempted sexual revolution in 18th century London; dangerously entwined lives in 1940s Trinidad; gripping tensions in Nazi-occupied Rome; a gentle 1960s home-counties heartbreaker; stories within stories from the terminus of the Underground Railroad; and love, betrayal and scandal in the Straits Settlements of Penang. At the heart of each novel lies a deep understanding of humanity in all its quirky strengths and weaknesses, with each of the WSP 2024 shortlisted authors having something new to say and a new way of saying it.’
Based on the true story of Hugh O’Flaherty, an Irish priest in the Vatican who helped escaped prisoners evade capture in Nazi-occupied Rome, MY FATHER’S HOUSE is a powerful literary thriller from a master of historical fiction. It was first published to great acclaim in the UK and Ireland by Harvill Secker in January 2023 and in the US by Europa Editions in April 2023. Paperback editions followed in February 2024 (UK) and April 2024 (US), with the latter accompanied by an inclusion in The New York Times – it was a ‘6 New Paperbacks to Read This Week’ pick. Translation rights have been sold in Brazil, France, Germany, Italy and Sweden, and film rights are under option.
MY FATHER’S HOUSE flew straight to No.1 in Ireland on publication and occupied the top spot for four weeks, and has sold over 100,000 copies in the English language overall. It was longlisted for the 2024 Dublin Literary Award and shortlisted for the Eason Novel of the Year Award at the 2023 An Post Irish Book Awards (with Joseph shortlisted for the Library Association of Ireland Author of the Year Award at the same event). In June Joseph O’Connor is taking part in an exciting live multi-city theatre version of the hugely successful BBC Two series BETWEEN THE COVERS (which featured MY FATHER’S HOUSE in November 2023). O’Connor features alongside the BETWEEN THE COVERS celebrities Kacey Ainsworth, Jo Brand, and Stephen Mangan.
MY FATHER’S HOUSE has also been very well received in its many translation markets – most recently in France where Payot & Rivages are already onto their second reprint and publications like Les chroniques de Goliath are describing it as ‘dazzling… A fiction that dives its roots so deeply into historical truth that it becomes entirely credible.’
Joseph is going to be the Writer in Residence at the Incontri in Terra di Siena Festival this July, and earlier this year the Irish ambassadors to Italy and the Vatican jointly organised a celebratory event at the Irish Embassy in Rome to mark both the release of Harvill Secker’s paperback edition of MY FATHER’S HOUSE and Guanda’s Italian edition of LA CASA DI MIO PADRE.
Joseph is currently working on THE GHOSTS OF ROME, the second novel in the Escape Line trilogy (of which MY FATHER’S HOUSE is the first), which is due to be published by Harvill Secker in the UK and Europa in the US in early 2025.
About Joseph O’Connor
Photo credit: Urszula Soltys
Joseph O’Connor was born in Dublin, where he still lives. MY FATHER’S HOUSE is his tenth novel: he is also the author of film scripts, radio and stage plays, two collections of short stories, and several bestselling works of non-fiction.
2022 was the 20th anniversary of Joseph O’Connor’s novel STAR OF THE SEA which was an international bestseller, selling more than a million copies in the UK alone and being published in 38 languages. It won France’s Prix Millepages, Italy’s Premio Acerbi, the Irish Post Award for Fiction, the Nielsen Bookscan Golden Book Award, an American Library Association Award, the Hennessy/Sunday Tribune Hall of Fame Award, and the Prix Litteraire Zepter for European Novel of the Year.
He holds an honorary Doctorate in Literature from University College Dublin and received the Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Contribution to Irish Literature in 2012. He is the Inaugural Frank McCourt Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Limerick.
Praise for MY FATHER’S HOUSE
‘A gripping, compelling and utterly brilliant read.’ – Liz Nugent
‘I was fortunate enough to get my hands on a beautifully produced advance copy of Joseph's new novel. What a joy and privilege to be an early reader of a work of art from a towering figure in world literature. MY FATHER’S HOUSE is a masterwork. No writer in the world can tell a story the way Joseph O’Connor does. He can, without seeming effort, be all things to all readers, taking us by the hand and guiding us into the very heart of a story, his narrative techniques deployed with such unearthly skill that we’re hardly aware that this was written at all, it feels so real, so urgent, so incredibly alive. This novel is a searing and beautiful example of storytelling’s infinite importance, to our humanness, to our chances of learning from our most terrible and our most transcendent moments, and all our moments in between, to hold all life sacred, to see each other as brothers and sisters, to love and protect each other. No wonder he is so cherished and loved by his countless devotees across the earth. He is a national and international treasure, the most generous and noble of writers, a true master of the art.’ – Donal Ryan
‘A spectacular, thrilling novel… offering much more than tensely plotted thrills… MY FATHER’S HOUSE celebrates triumphant against-the-odds camaraderie. It would require a present-day Puccini to do operatic justice to its tremendous tale.’ – Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times
‘This formidable talent for writing across genres is reflected in his masterly 10th novel, which should reap similar plaudits… This is a literary thriller of the highest order. The incarnation of O’Flaherty, the Irish Oskar Schindler, is sublime. What often elevates a writer is compassion, and O’Connor has it in spades – paying tribute to the courage of those who resist tyranny. Beautifully crafted, his razor-sharp dialogue is to be savoured, and he employs dark humour to great effect. The plot twists keep on coming until the novel’s coda, where a final joyful conceit is revealed.’ – Lucy Popescu, The Observer
‘Joseph O’Connor’s historical novel MY FATHER’S HOUSE manages to be at once a ripping yarn and a profound exploration of moral choices in the worst of times… With lyrical evocation of time and place, scabrous humour and heart-stopping tension, it combines the pleasures of the ideal holiday read with those of a literary masterpiece.’ – Fintan O’Toole, The Irish Times, ‘The Best Books of 2023 so far’
