Shortlist
Mr B. George Balanchine's Twentieth Century
Jennifer Homans
Cheating Death in 1970s Belfast
Kevin Myers
Watching the Door is the memoir of an ordinary young man who drifted into a war zone, made it his home and, somehow, emerged unscathed.
After Kevin Myers graduated from university in 1969, a chance job application landed him a position as a journalist in Belfast. There, he was absorbed quickly into the local community. Soon he became privy to the secrets of Protestant and Catholic paramilitaries alike. In his darkly funny account of life on the streets, Myers evokes with searing clarity a society on the brink of civil war. His memoir is a remarkable portrait of those divisions, from the dedicated violence of loyalist gangs and provos to the behaviour of paratroopers, squaddies, Northern Ireland's police force and the wider population. Raw, candid and courageous, Watching the Door recalls the bloodiest time in Northern Ireland's recent past. It is a coming-of-age story like no other.
Kevin Myers, writer, broadcaster and novelist (Banks of Green Willow, 2001), is author of the best-selling Kevin Myers (2001), a gathering of his celebrated Irishman's Diary in The Irish Times, which he wrote for over twenty-five years. He is now an Irish Independent columnist.
Shortlist
Jennifer Homans
Longlist
Nathan Thrall
Longlist
Tiya Miles
Shortlist
Tania Branigan