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Close to Home

Close to Home

Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

WINNER OF THE ROONEY PRIZE FOR LITERATURE 2023
WATERSTONES IRISH BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023

SHORTLISTED FOR THE NERO BOOK AWARDS 2023
SHORTLISTED FOR THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR 2023

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE 2023

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

©2023 Michael Magee (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Reviews

  • Exceptional . . . Every detail rings true, every character is fleshy and real and heartbreaking . . . Magee has a remarkable talent
    Sunday Times (Laura Hackett)

About the author

Michael Magee

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.
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