May 22, 2025, 2:09pm
Today, Canadian writer Michael Crummey’s “dark, enthralling novel about love and its limitations” was announced as the winner of this year’s Dublin Literary Award. Selected from a shortlist of six novels, The Adversary took home the top prize.
The Dublin Literary Award only accepts nominations from public libraries: authors, agents, and publishers can disqualify their books if they try to get involved. Crummey was nominated by the Canadian Newfoundland and Labrador libraries, and sweetly thanked them in his acceptance speech:
I would not be here today without the Buchans Public Library, the library in my hometown. It’s like a small mining town, maybe 1,500 people down 70km of a dead end road. But the library was the place where I found the world outside my town, and it just gave me such a sense of possibility.
Sponsored by the Dublin City Council, the Dublin Literary Award has been around for 30 years. With a prize of €100,000, it’s the highest paying annual award for a single book in English.
The Adversary is set in remote Newfoundland, and follows the aftermath of a wedding gone awry, which kicks off “a battle between the man and woman who own Mockbeggar’s largest mercantile firms, each fighting for the scarce resources of the north Atlantic fishery, each seeking a measure of revenge on the person they despise most in the world.”
Crummey joins recent winners Mircea Cărtărescu’s Solenoid, translated by Sean Cotter; Katja Oskamp’s Marzahn, Mon Amour, translated by Jo Heinrich; Alice Zeniter’s The Art of Losing, translated by Frank Wynne; Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive; and Anna Burns’ Milkman.
