Irish PEN Award 2012 goes to Joseph O’Connor

On 10 February 2012, Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland, will present Irish PEN's annual award to Joseph O'Connor for his remarkable achievements and contributions to Irish Literature.

Besides a number of bestselling works of non-fiction, Joseph O'Connor is the author of novels Cowboys and Indians (short-listed for the Whitbread Prize), Desperadoes, The Salesman , Inishowen , Star of the Sea and Redemption Falls.

Swedish audience has known O'Connor through novels Cowboys and Indians, published in Swedish in 1992, and Redemption Falls, which was translated into Swedish and published in 2008. The author was praised as a 'postmodern Vilhelm Moberg' in a review in the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter.

Selling more than a million copies and being published in 38 languages, his novel Star of the Sea became an international bestseller. It earned the author France's Prix Millepages, Italy's Premio Acerbi, the Irish Post Award for Fiction, the Neilsen Bookscan Golden Book Award, an American Library Association Award, the Hennessy / Sunday Tribune Hall of Fame Award, and the Prix Litteraire Zepter for European Novel of the Year.

The purpose of the award, established by Irish PEN in 1998, is to mark an Irish-born writer's outstanding contribution to Irish Literature.