We're delighted to welcome back Paul Murray to discuss his "generous, immersive, sharp-witted and devastating" (FT), 2023 Booker-shorlisted novel The Bee Sting.

Free & open to all. Places limited. Arrive early to avoid disappointment.

The Barnes family are in trouble. Until recently they ran the biggest business in town, now they’re teetering on the brink of bankruptcy – and that’s just the start of their problems. Dickie and Imelda’s marriage is hanging by a thread; straight-A student Cass is careening off the rails; PJ is hopelessly in debt to the school bully. Meanwhile the ghosts of old mistakes are rising out of the past to meet them, but everyone’s too wrapped up in the present to see the danger looming . . .

THE 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2023 - NEW YORK TIMES

WINNER OF IRISH BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2023
SHORTLISTED FOR THE NERO BOOK AWARDS 2023
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WRITERS’ PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024
ONE OF SARAH JESSICA PARKER’S BEST BOOKS OF 2023

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Paul Murray is the Dublin-born author of four acclaimed novels. An Evening of Long Goodbyes (2003) was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award. Skippy Dies (2010) was shortlisted for the Costa Book Award and the National Book Critics’ Circle Prize, and longlisted for the Booker Prize. The Mark and the Void (2015) won the Bollinger Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction and was one of Time Magazine’s ten best fiction books for 2015. Paul's most recent novel, The Bee Sting, won the Nero Prize for Fiction and the An Post Irish Book of the Year Award, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and was named one of the Ten Best Books of 2023 in the New York Times and the Washington Post. Paul’s stories and journalism have appeared in The Guardian, The Paris Review, New York, Granta, and the New York Times.