Canadian author Michael Crummey shortlisted for $154K Dublin Literary Award
The Newfoundland writer is nominated for his novel The Adversary
Newfoundland author Michael Crummey has made the six-person shortlist for the 2025 Dublin Literary Award.
The €100,000 (approx. $153,610 Cdn) prize annually recognizes the best work of fiction in English from anywhere in the world. This year, the prize celebrates its 30th year in operation.
Crummey is recognized for his novel The Adversary, about a heated sibling rivalry to represent the largest fishing operations on Newfoundland's northern outpost. When a wedding that would have secured Abe Strapp's hold on the shore falls apart, it sets off a series of events that lead to year after year of violence and vendettas and a seemingly endless feud.
"This novel is about a community that is dominated by two black holes and everybody ends up in the orbit of one of those or the other," said Crummey in an interview on The Next Chapter. "This is a small community, these are two incredibly powerful irresistible black holes and in the end, everybody is sucked into them in one way or the other."
"Even the innocents, even the people who try to do the best with what they can."
Crummey is also the author of the novels The Innocents, Sweetland and Galore and the poetry collections Arguments with Gravity and Passengers. Two of Crummey's novels have been shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction — Sweetland in 2014 and Galore in 2009.
The Innocents was shortlisted for the 2019 Giller Prize, the 2019 Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction.
Crummey is the only Canadian to have made this year's shortlist from the seven who were on the longlist.
The Dublin prize's longlist was compiled by library nominations from around the world, while a jury selects the shortlist and winner from these submissions.
The other books on the shortlist are Not a River by Selva Almada, translated from Spanish by Annie McDermot, We Are Light by Gerda Blees, translated from Dutch by Michele Hutchison, James by Percival Everett, Prophet Song by Paul Lynch and North Woods by Daniel Mason.
The 2025 jury is comprised of writer Fiona Sze-Lorrain, writer Gerbrand Bakker, scholar Leonard Cassuto, author Martina Devlin and poet Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe.
The jury is chaired by Chris Morash, a professor at Trinity College Dublin, who does not vote.
The winner will be revealed on May 22.
Last year's winner was Solenoid by Romanian author Mircea Cărtărescu and translator Sean Cotter.
Two Canadians have won the prize since its 1996 inception: Alistair MacLeod won in 2001 for No Great Mischief and Rawi Hage won in 2008 for De Niro's Game.
