Irish authors Paul Murray and Michael Magee have both been announced as winners in the Nero Book Awards.

Murray took home the fiction category prize for his acclaimed novel The Bee Sting – which depicts a dysfunctional well-to-do family in Dublin.

“As good as Murray’s previous novels are, he sailed past them with this tragi-comic Tolstoian doorstop,” said Pat Carty when looking back at the best books of 2023. “Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song is great but this masterful epic was our vote for the Booker.”

Magee was victorious in the debut fiction category for Close to Home, a novel detailing the lives of two working-class Belfast brothers.

“What sets this apart is the voice, which perfectly evokes a character and a community straining so hard against the systemic clamps of poverty, disillusionment, and ennui that the effort crackles off the page,” judges said.

 

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Elsewhere, Fern Brady was chosen as the winner for the best in nonfiction category for her memoir Strong Female Character, while The Swifts by Beth Lincoln was crowned winner of the children’s fiction category.

The Nero Book Awards started last May, and celebrates the “best reads of the year” from UK and Irish writers. This year’s judges include writers Sarfraz Manzoor, Dave Rudden Anthony Quinn, and Sara Collins.

Each winner will receive £5,000 (€5,851) in prize money and contention for the £30,000 (€35,109) Nero Gold Prize – to be judged by a panel chaired by renowned author and Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo.