Canadian author Michael Crummey wins $154K Dublin Literary Award

CBC

22-05-2025

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Michael Crummey has won the Dublin Literary Award for his novel The Adversary.
The Newfoundland writer will receive €100,000 (approximately $153,610 Cdn) as part of the prize, which is awarded annually to 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.
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.
This year's winner was selected from a jury comprised of writer Fiona Sze-Lorrain, writer Gerbrand Bakker, scholar Leonard Cassuto, author Martina Devlin and poet Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe.
The jury was chaired by Chris Morash, a professor at Trinity College Dublin, who does not vote.
"Michael Crummey's The Adversary compellingly and convincingly immerses its readers in a world previously lost to fiction, and almost lost to memory: a Newfoundland outport from the early years of the colony, connected to the world outside only by the occasional supply ship," said the jury in a press statement.
The award was announced today at the International Literature Festival Dublin, a ten-day celebration of literature and culture held in Dublin's Merrion Square Park, where Crummey will join writer Madeleine Keane for a conversation about The Adversary on May 23.
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.
Last year's winner was Solenoid by Romanian author Mircea Cărtărescu and translator Sean Cotter.