The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award is the world's largest literary prize, awarding £100,000 for a single work of fiction. Nominations are received by public libraries in major cities around the world, making the IMPAC Dublin Award one of the most internationally relevant prizes in literature.
1. 2005 - The Known World
By American writer, Edward P. Jones. "The Known World weaves together the lives of freed and enslaved blacks, whites, and Indians — and allows all of us a deeper understanding of the enduring multidimensional world created by the institution of slavery."2. 2004 - This Blinding Absence of Light
By Moroccon writer, Tahar Ben Jelloun. A fictionalized narrative of the Morrocan concentration camps in which King Hassan II held his political adversaries under appalling conditions.
3. 2003 - My Name is Red
By Turkish writer, Orhan Pamuk. When the Sultan commissions a great book to celebrate his royal self and his extensive dominion, he directs Enishte Effendi to assemble a cadre of the most acclaimed artists in the land. Their task: to illuminate the work in the European style.4. 2002 - Atomised (The Elementary Particles)
By French writer, Michel Houellebecq. Bruno and Michel are half-brothers abandoned by their mother, an unabashed devotee of the drugged-out free-love world of the sixties. Bruno, the older, has become a raucously promiscuous hedonist himself, while Michel is an emotionally dead molecular biologist wholly immersed in the solitude of his work.5. 2001 - No Great Mischief
By Canadian writer, Alistair MacLeod. Generations after their forebears went into exile, the MacDonalds still face seemingly unmitigated hardships and cruelties of life. Alexander, orphaned as a child by a horrific tragedy, has nevertheless gained some success in the world. Even his older brother, Calum, a nearly destitute alcoholic living on Toronto's skid row, has been scarred by another tragedy.6. 2000 - Wide Open
By English writer, Nicola Barker. Fifty miles to the south and east of London, poking out into the estuary of the river Thames, the Isle of Sheppey is a forgotten, misty backwater. There's a prison, some wading birds and a small nudist beach.7.
By English writer, Andrew Miller. In the mid-18th century James Dyer is born unable to feel pain, and grows up to be a brilliant but heartless brain surgeon. Then, en route to St Petersburg in 1767, he meets his match - a strange woman with supernatural healing powers.8. 1998 - The Land of Green Plums
By Romanian writer, Herta Müller. Set in Romania at the height of Ceausescu's reign of terror, The Land of Green Plums tells the story of a group of young students, each of whom has left the impoverished provinces in search of better prospects in the city.9. 1997 - A Heart So White
By Spanish novelist, Javier Marias. Juan knows little of the interior life of his father Ranz; but when Juan marries, he begins to consider the past anew, and begins to ponder what he doesn't really want to know. Secrecy-its possible convenience, its price, and even its civility-hovers throughout the novel.