THE BORD GÁIS ENERGY IRISH BOOK AWARDS 2017

The Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards celebrates and promotes Irish writing and this year ONSIDE sponsorship and research was proud partner of the Non-fiction Book of the Year, with Fergal Keane winning the category with Wounds: a memoir of war and love.

The awards bring together a huge community passionate about books – readers, authors, booksellers, publishers and librarians – recognise and celebrate the very best of Irish writing talent.

The awards includes fifteen categories spanning the literary genres, including Novel of the Year, Children’s, Nonfiction, Crime Fiction, Popular Fiction, Sports, Short Story, Poetry, Cookery and the new Teen and Young Adult book of the year category.

SHORTLISTED ENTRIES

WOUNDS: A MEMOIR OF WAR & LOVE (FERGAL KEANE)

In this family story of blood and memory and the haunting power of the past, Keane uses the experiences of his ancestral homeland in north Kerry to examine why people will kill for a cause and how the act of killing reverberates through the generations.

IN AMERICA: TALES FROM TRUMP COUNTRY (CAITRÍONA PERRY)

In her first book RTÉ’s Washington Correspondent goes beyond the news reports and delves into the American heartland. This is the story of the American people who were angry and disillusioned by traditional politics – the workers of the industrial heartland, of the women of America, of immigrant communities and many more. This is the story of the people who shook the world.

I AM, I AM, I AM (MAGGIE O'FARRELL)

I Am, I Am, I Am is a memoir with a difference – the unputdownable story of a life in near-death experiences. Insightful, inspirational, intelligent, it is a book to be read at a sitting, a story you finish newly conscious of life’s fragility, determined to make every heartbeat count.

BREXIT AND IRELAND (TONY CONNOLLY)

When the citizens of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, they delivered a profound shock to its nearest neighbour: Ireland. Brexit represents potentially the single greatest foreign-policy and economic challenge to the Irish state since the Second World War.

More than any other journalist, RTÉ’s long-time Brussels correspondent Tony Connelly has been helping the public make sense of the implications of Brexit for Ireland. Now, in Brexit and Ireland, he tells the inside story of the Irish response and explores the many ways in which this political and economic earthquake is likely to play out. Based on extensive interviews with insiders in Dublin, London, Belfast and Brussels, and building on Tony Connelly’s unmatched feel for how the EU really works, Brexit and Ireland is a must-read for anyone who cares about Ireland’s future.

ALFIE (TREVOR WHITE)

Alfie Byrne was that rarest of things: a genuinely popular politician, and a genuine independent. He is still a figure of legend in Dublin, where he was elected Lord Mayor ten times. He was also a TD and a Senator; and only a backroom deal prevented him from becoming the first President of Ireland in 1938. Rising from inner city Dublin to become known as the ‘Lord Mayor of Ireland’, he was a truly remarkable figure. And yet there has never been a biography of Alfie Byrne – until now.

Trevor White’s sparkling book tells the story of a man of many parts and contradictions. He was an urbane man of the world who left school at thirteen. He was a teetotal publican. He was a Parnellite who opposed violence, but he was sympathetic to the Easter rebels. His politics were fundamentally conservative, but he was deeply devoted to the poor of his native city.

AFTER IRELAND (DECLAN KIBERD)

Church scandals, political corruption, and economic collapse have shaken our faith in Ireland’s institutions. But, as Declan Kiberd argues in this critical survey, the country’s creative writers have preserved and extended a humane culture that imagines a renewed, more open nation. Following on from 1995’s Inventing Ireland, this is a magisterial account of the second renaissance in Irish literature.