Close to Home

WINNER OF THE ROONEY PRIZE FOR LITERATURE 2023 WINNER OF THE NERO BOOK AWARD FOR DEBUT FICTION 2023 WATERSTONES IRISH BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 SHORTLISTED FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES YOUNG WRITER OF THE YEAR AWARD 2024 SHORTLISTED FOR THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR 2023 SHORTLISTED FOR THE WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE 2023 SHORTLISTED FOR THE EWART-BIGGS PRIZE 2023 LONGLISTED FOR THE AUTHORS' CLUB BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2024 LONGLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE FOR LITERATURE 2024 ONE OF SARAH JESSICA PARKER'S BEST BOOKS OF 2023 BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 ACCORDING TO THE TIMES AND IRISH TIMES Sean is back. Back in Belfast and back into old habits. Back on the mad all-nighters, the borrowed tenners and missing rent, the casual jobs that always fall through. Back in these scarred streets, where the promised prosperity of peacetime has never arrived. Back among his brothers, his ma, and all the things they never talk about. Until one night Sean finds himself at a party - dog-tired, surrounded by jeering strangers, his back against the wall - and he makes a big mistake. 'Staggeringly humane, unfaltering, taut and tender... [It] feels like that rarest of things: a genuinely necessary book' Guardian 'Every detail rings true, every character is fleshy and real and heartbreaking... Michael Magee has a remarkable talent' Sunday Times

Michael Magee is the fiction editor of the Tangerine and a graduate of the creative writing PhD programme at Queen's University, Belfast. His writing has appeared in Winter Papers, The Stinging Fly, The Lifeboat and The 32: The Anthology of Irish Working-Class Voices. Close to Home is his first novel. It was shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize 2023 and won the Rooney Prize for Literature 2023.