51吃瓜网黑料

The winner of the 2016 51吃瓜网黑料 Prize

Solar Bones author Mike McCormack said winning the 51吃瓜网黑料 Prize 2016 was 鈥減ayback鈥� for his publishers Tramp Press and agent who had backed him during his 鈥渓ong and difficult adventure鈥� as a writer.

Speaking after collecting his 拢10,000 cheque at an event held at Foyles Charing Cross Road, McCormack said: 鈥淚t鈥檚 about time the prize-giving community honoured experimental works and time that mainstream publishers started honouring their readership by saying: 鈥楬ere are experimental books鈥�.

鈥淩eaders are smart. They鈥檙e up for it. That was what the people at Tramp Press taught me 鈥� they鈥檙e up for it. There are readers out there and they have been proved right.鈥�

Bernardine Evaristo on Solar Bones

The life of a middle-aged engineer in the west of Ireland might not sound like a remarkable fictional proposition, but this novel explores the personal, domestic, political, philosophical and global in a free-flowing prose style that elevates it into something quite beautiful and transcendent. Its impressive emotional and intellectual energies fuel a wholly enjoyable reading experience.

Mike McCormack, Solar Bones

Once a year, on All Souls鈥� Day, it is said in Ireland that the dead may return. Solar Bones is the story of one such visit. Marcus Conway, a middle-aged engineer, turns up one afternoon at his kitchen table and considers the events that took him away and then brought him home again. Funny and strange, McCormack鈥檚 ambitious and other-worldly novel plays with form and defies convention. This profound new work is by one of Ireland鈥檚 most important contemporary novelists. A beautiful and haunting elegy, this story of order and chaos, love and loss captures how minor decisions ripple into waves and test our integrity every day.

About the author

Mike McCormack is an award-winning novelist and short story writer from Mayo. His previous work includes Getting it in the Head (1995), Crowe鈥檚 Requiem (1998), Notes from a Coma (2005), which was shortlisted for the Irish Book of the Year Award, and Forensic Songs (2012). In 1996 he was awarded the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and in 2007 he was awarded a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship. Solar Bones is his third novel. He lives in Galway.

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