Irish writer Michael Collins and the two most recent Booker Prize winners are among the seven contenders for this year's International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
The diverse shortlist announced in Dublin yesterday includes five men and two women from seven countries. Three of the seven novels, all of which have been nominated by a panel of public libraries in 50 countries, are in translation.
Limerick-born Collins, now based in Seattle, is shortlisted for The Keepers of Truth, which was a surprise contender for the 2000 Booker Prize, featured until the final decision and has grown in stature since. Told in a deadpan first person by Bill who works for the local newspaper but would rather be penning philosophical meditations, it is a thriller with many differences.
It is also a vivid portrait of smalltown America, pitched at both local and national level, and develops into a study of corruption. Collins sustains his zany tale with control and humour. For all its surprises and sharp digressions, it shows a still young Irish writer moving beyond his native experiences to take the traditional elements of story and create something that is original, different and engaging.
Already tipped by bookmakers William Hill as the 3-1 favourite, however, is the 2000 Booker Prize winner, Canadian Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin.
One of the world's most widely read authors, Atwood, in common with Collins, has written a thriller of sorts and again in common with his book, the strength of her novel lies in the narrative voice. Atwood's narrator, Iris Chase, tells most of the story which is largely that of her merchant family, her beautiful sister's death and her own marriage to a cad. There is also a novel within the novel, adding to the layers. Nominated by 11 libraries, Atwood's novel, though her finest, is already a bestseller and further evidence of the immense popularity enjoyed by the Canadian.
Her main rival must be last year's Booker winner, Australian Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang, currently 6-4. Based on the life and times of the bushranger Ned Kelly, it is an extraordinary novel that not only won Carey his second Booker prize, it held off the Booker challenge of Ian McEwan's Atonement - which was expected to make the Dublin shortlist but has failed to do so.
Carey used The Jerilderie Letter, Kelly's real life testament, as his source in order to give voice to the man who has become an Australian foundation myth. True History is an exciting, virtuoso performance with an authentic tone of self justification that never falters as Kelly appears to tell his story from the grave. Carey is a great storyteller, and always difficult to beat.
Michel Houellebecq's Atomised, a terrifyingly truthful satire on French society and humankind at large, translated by Frank Wynne, is already a cult classic. Not only does it showcase French intellectual playfulness at its most wicked, it is also candid, shocking and possibly prophetic. Two brothers, each with his own agony, wander through an erotic maze shaped by Cocteau and Tournier. Its selection confers daring and flair on the judges.
Largely due to his having already travelled the journey of Mexican 20th century history, Carlos Fuentes's romantic historical saga The Years with Laura Diaz, translated by Alfred MacAdam, seems predictable. Dominated by its heroine, the course of her life, loves and beauty, it lacks the substance to match its scale. Curiously, considering the fire and swagger that has always shaped his fiction, this is the dullest contender.
US writer Helen de Witt is short-listed for her debut The Last Samurai. Clever, confident with more than its fair share of gags, some good, some obscure, it is about a boy's search for his father. Raised by his lone mother, young Ludo and she have spent hours devising their code to live by, from repeated viewings of Kurosawa's epic, Seven Samurai. It's a modern quest; funny and inventive if overly clinical.
Admirers of Bernard Schlink's The Reader will be drawn into Antoni Libera's sophisticated Madame, translated from the Polish by Agnieszka Kolakowska. It is yet another variation on the theme of young boy obsessed with older woman. It is funny and literary and the young narrator's energy guarantees our sympathy.
IMPAC remains the world's largest literary prize in cash terms for a single work, although its £100,000 purse has been reduced in the currency transfer and now stands at €100,000. True History of the Kelly Gang is unforgettable but Collins could provide the first home winner.