Michael Magee wins John McGahern Prize for Fiction

Belfast writer Michael Magee was been awarded the John McGahern Prize for debut Irish Fiction.

His masterful novel Close to Home was chosen by Colm Tóibín as the 2023 winner among two other shortlisted books, Noel O'Regan's Though the Bodies Fall and Kala by Colin Walsh.

The prize, now in its fifth iteration, was established by the University of Liverpool's Institute of Irish Studies to honour the memory of one of Ireland's masters of prose fiction.

Set in 2013, after the financial crash, Close To Home centres on Sean Maguire, a young working-class man wrestling with masculinity and lack of opportunity. The trauma and violence of the previous century continues to cast a shadow over Belfast's streets and its peoples' consciences. Uncertain of the future, Close to Home is a sharp and revealing novel about a young man, and a city, caught in the painful throes of reimagining itself.

“Close to Home by Michael Magee has an astonishing narrative energy; the rhythms of the sentences and lines of dialogue are powerfully managed," Tóibín commented on Magee's winning novel. "It is the story of a young man’s struggle to live in a society that is haunted by violence and maimed by the present as much as the past. But it is also a novel about love and friendship, with many scenes created with great tenderness and tact.

“While some sections of the book offer an overwhelming sense of brutality, other sections are brilliant examples of comic writing. It is a novel that re-creates the city of Belfast in its own likeness, effortlessly handling idiom and tone and undertone. Close to Home offers us a new and memorable portrait of a young protagonist, caught between innocence and experience, as imagined by a supremely talented writer.”

Magee will be honoured at the awards ceremony, which will be held as part of the annual Liverpool Literary Festival from 4th-6th October. The location of the prize ceremony offers a full-circle moment for the author, Magee having studied in Liverpool for his undergrad, just like the novel's chief protagonist, Sean.

Now with the John McGahern Annual Book Prize among his accolades, Magee's debut has already won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Nero Book Award for Debut Fiction and the 2023 Waterstones Irish Book of the Year.

In an interview for Hot Press last May, Magee discussed how he laid the novel’s foundations: “It took me a long time to get to that point,” Michael reflects. “This is the thing about having these presumptions of what literary fiction is.

"There was also probably some degree of shame in my voice, and being reluctant to use it. I always felt this discomfort around it. The process of embracing it came from reading things that were similar to my experience of class – I’d see a working class voice articulated, and how you can use it as a mode of communication.”