AWARD-WINNING Irish author Roddy Doyle has been shortlisted for this year’s Carnegie Medal for children's fiction.
Doyle has received the nomination for the prestigious award for A Greyhound of a Girl, a story about a young Irish girl’s first encounter with death that spans four generations of her family.
The Dubliner will compete with seven other shortlisted writers for the award, including Sally Gardener, who won this year’s Costa children’s award for her entry Maggot Moon.
If Doyle were to win, he would become one of only two people to claim both the Carnegie Medal and the Booker Prize, which he won in 1993 for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. Penelope Lively became the first person to achieve the feat in 1987 when her novel Moon Tiger won the Booker Prize following her receipt of the Carnegie Medal in 1973 for A Ghost of Thomas Kempe.
"Masterful storytelling is in evidence in the Carnegie list, with powerful narratives leaping out and pulling the reader in," said Karen Robinson, chair of this year’s judging panel. "Big themes such as family death, disfigurement, genocide, and the devastating aftermath of the Haiti earthquake are handled with honesty, style and beauty."
