Chairperson: Mick Heaney

“Now I worry about Colum McCann,” wrote Frank McCourt. “What is he going to do after this blockbuster groundbreaking heartbreaking symphony of a novel?” The novel in question was Let the Great World Spin, a book that weaved together the lives of a diverse group of New Yorkers in the shadow of a breathtaking high-wire act between the Twin Towers. It won McCann a host of international awards, including the National Book Award in the US and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and firmly established him in the first rank of contemporary novelists.

As McCourt suggests, most novelists would struggle to follow that, but McCann’s new novel, Transatlantic, is an equally bold and ambitious tale interweaving several different stories of Irish-American crossings and exchange, from Frederick Douglass’ visit to a famine-stricken Ireland in 1845, to Alcock and Brown’s famous non-stop flight from Newfoundland to Connemara in 1919 and Senator George Mitchell’s efforts to broker the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Whether writing about an Irish monk working in the Bronx or a Roma exile in post-war Europe, McCann always brings a poet’s eye and a boldness of vision to bear on an array of fascinating characters, and his latest work is no exception.