International Dublin Literary Award
2025 Winner
2025 Shortlist & Longlist
Shortlist
Complete History
2020s
About the International Dublin Literary Award
The International Dublin Literary Award—known at various times as the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Dublin Literary Award—is one of the world's largest and most prestigious prizes for a single work of fiction published in English. Founded in 1994 by Dublin City Council in partnership with IMPAC (a management productivity company) and first awarded in 1996, the prize has always been distinctive in its nomination process: public libraries in cities around the world nominate novels of high literary merit, making it a genuinely international prize in both scope and reach.
The award carries a prize of €100,000 (approximately $110,000 USD)—the largest prize for a single work of fiction anywhere in the English-speaking world. When the winning book is a translation, the award is split: €75,000 goes to the author and €25,000 to the translator. Novels must be written in or translated into English. After IMPAC ceased operations, Dublin City Council took over full sponsorship around 2013, and the award was renamed the International Dublin Literary Award in 2015–2016 and more recently simply the Dublin Literary Award.
Winners have included Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin (2011), Juan Gabriel Vásquez's The Sound of Things Falling (2014), José Eduardo Agualusa's A General Theory of Oblivion (2017), Anna Burns's Milkman (2020), Valeria Luiselli's Lost Children Archive (2021), and Mircea Cărtărescu's Solenoid (2024). The award is managed by Dublin City Libraries.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Public libraries in cities around the world nominate novels they consider of high literary merit. Any library system affiliated with the award can nominate titles, making the process uniquely democratic and internationally distributed.
- The prize is €100,000. For translated works, this is split between the author (€75,000) and the translator (€25,000).
- The novel must be written in English or translated into English, and must have been published during the eligibility period. Books published in any country are eligible, provided they appear in an English edition.
- The award recognizes that translation is an essential creative act. By giving a significant portion (€25,000) directly to the translator, the Dublin Award explicitly honors the translator's contribution to making a work accessible to English readers.
- No. After IMPAC ceased sponsorship (around 2009–2013), Dublin City Council took over full funding. The award was renamed the International Dublin Literary Award around 2015–2016 and is now simply called the Dublin Literary Award.
- The shortlist typically contains around six novels, drawn from a much larger longlist of nominations submitted by libraries worldwide.
- The winner is typically announced in June, during the summer Dublin Book Festival season.