About the award
Inaugurated in 2000, the Novel of the Year was the foundation stone of the Irish Book Awards. Early winners included John McGahern, Colum McCann and Anne Enright. Eason are proud to sponsor this prestigious award, which is always a mark of the depth and quality of Irish fiction.
Sponsored by
Eason Novel of the Year 2021
Trespasses
by Louise Kennedy
One by one, she undid each event, each decision, each choice.
If Davy had remembered to put on a coat.
If Seamie McGeown had not found himself alone on a dark street.
If Michael Agnew had not walked through the door of the pub on a quiet night in February in his white shirt.
There is nothing special about the day Cushla meets Michael, a married man from Belfast, in the pub owned by her family. But here, love is never far from violence, and this encounter will change both of their lives forever.
As people get up each morning and go to work, school, church or the pub, the daily news rolls in of another car bomb exploded, another man beaten, killed or left for dead. In the class Cushla teaches, the vocabulary of seven-year-old children now includes phrases like āpetrol bombā and ārubber bulletsā. And as she is forced to tread lines she never thought she would cross, tensions in the town are escalating, threatening to destroy all she is working to hold together.
Tender and shocking, Trespasses is an unforgettable debut of people trying to live ordinary lives in extraordinary times.

Shadowplay
Normal People
Midwinter Break
Solar Bones
Previous Winners
2020 – Strange Flowers by Donal Ryan
2019 – Shadowplay
by Joseph OāConnor
2018 – Normal People
by Sally Rooney
2017 – Midwinter Break
by Bernard MacLaverty
2016 – Solar Bones
by Mike McCormack
2015 – The Green Road
by Anne Enright
2014 – Academy Street
by Mary Costello
2013 – The Guts
by Roddy Doyle
2012 – Ancient Light
by John Banville
2011 – Mistaken
by Neil Jordan
2010 – Room
by Emma Donoghue
2009 – The Secret Scripture
by Sebastian Barry
2008 – The Gathering
by Anne Enright
2007 – Winterwood
by Patrick McCabe
2006 – The Sea
by John Banville
2005 – Havoc In Its Third Year
by Ronan Bennett
2004 – Dancer
by Colum McCann
2003 – That They May Face the Rising Sun
by John McGahern