KEANE ON BOOKS

There was plenty of uplifting book news last week, starting with word of Sally Rooney’s next novel Beautiful World, Where Are You, which will be published by Faber in September. The Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University, Belfast appointed Louise Kennedy and Padraig Regan as the inaugural Ciaran Carson Writing and City Fellows for 2021. Poet Regan and Kennedy, who publishes her debut short story collection in March, are both alumni of the centre.

Meanwhile, Niamh Campbell (her novel This Happy was one of last year’s literary highlights) takes up the writer-in-residence mantle at UCD’s dynamic School of English.

News that Leonard and Hungry Paul — Rónán Hession’s beguiling tale of friendship — will be this year’s One City, One Book was greeted with much joy. Dublin City Library’s superb initiative runs through April and, encourages us to delve into a work connected with our capital. Full programme in March.

Let’s hope literary festivals return in corporeal form soon. Much-loved Listowel Writers’ Week has just put out its call for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year 2021 which rewards the best work by an Irish author published between February 1, 2020 and February 1, 2021. This year’s adjudicators are novelist

Rachel Cusk and poet and critic Richard Skinner. A shortlist of five will be announced in March and the €15,000 prize will be presented at the opening ceremony of Writers’ Week on June 2. Closing date for submissions is February 1.

The books we love don’t always adapt well to screen but I’m hearing a good buzz about The White Tiger which launches on Netflix next Friday, and is reviewed here on page 14. Aravind Adiga’s extraordinary debut picked up the Booker Prize in 2008 and Ramin Bahrani directs the Indian epic.

Finally, if you’re free at 4pm today, the International Literature Festival is running an online event with Zoe Sugg and Amy McCulloch, YA authors of The Mapgie Society. Tickets and info from ilfdublin.com