IRISH author Colin Barrett has been announced among the category winners in the second annual Nero Book Awards.
The Mayo native has scooped the best Debut Fiction award for Wild Houses, which is set in his home county.
An acclaimed short story writer, the book is Barrett’s first novel.
“Our winner Wild Houses was a clear stand-out for the sheer quality of its writing; a literary page-turner, with prose both lyrical and absorbing, brilliant dialogue and characters who seem to have walked off the street and onto the page,” the Nero Book Award judges said.
“The wit and humour in this novel belies an undercurrent of menace, and yet there is deep empathy and compassion at its heart.”
Set in Mayo, Wild Houses follows a small-town feud, a kidnapping and a life-altering weekend.
Barrett’s previous work includes Young Skins, which won the Guardian First Book Award and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, and Calm with Horses, which was adapted into a major feature film starring Barry Keoghan in 2020.
Elsewhere in the awards, Lost in the Garden by Adam S. Leslie won the Fiction category, Maurice and Maralyn: An Extraordinary True Story of Shipwreck, Survival and Love by Sophie Elmhirst was the Non-Fiction winner and The Twelve by Liz Hyder took the Children’s Fiction gong.
Each category winner receives £5k and is now in contention for the Nero Gold Prize for Book of the Year 2024.
The overall winner will be decided by a judging panel chaired by US author Bill Bryson and announced at a ceremony in central London on March 5. They will receive an additional £30k prize.
“The standard of entries this year was very high and with such incredible shortlists, our judges had a difficult job of picking just one winner in each category,” Gerry Ford, Founder and Group CEO of Caffè Nero said as the winners were revealed today.
“They have chosen four impressive books which display an outstanding level of writing and captivating story telling.
“These four books are worthy winners and collectively, will appeal to readers of all ages and tastes and represent the best writing from the UK and Ireland.
“I look forward to announcing our Gold Prize winner in March, and I am proud to continue to support the arts at Caffè Nero through the Nero Book Awards.”
The inaugural Nero Gold Prize 2023 was won by Dubliner Paul Murray for his book The Bee Sting.