Alan Murrin Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Alan Murrin is a published Irish author of fiction.

Based in Berlin, he was the winner of the Bournemouth Writing Prize in 2021 for “The Wake”, a short story he had written. The short story would go on to be shortlisted at the Irish Book Awards for the short story of the year.

Alan has received an Irish Arts Council Agility Award as well as an Arts Council Literature Bursary. He also graduated from the prose fiction masters at the University of East Anglia. His work has been featured in the Irish Independent as part of the New Irish Writing series.

Alan’s work has also been shortlisted for other prizes and recognition, being shortlisted for the Irish Arts and Writers Festival short story prize and the New Irish Writing in Germany Prize. Alan also was longlisted for the 2021 University of Essex International short story prize. He is a writer for the Times Literary Supplement, the Irish Times and Spectator.

In addition, his writing on subjects like art and photography has also been featured in Art Review as well as The White Review.

The Coast Road is a 2024 novel and the debut fictional work from writer Alan Murrin. It has been well received, winning the Irish Book Awards Newcomer of the Year 2024. It was also shortlisted for the John McGahern Annual Book Prize.

It is a well written and often poignant story that is about the lives of women who reside in a claustrophobic coast town and who are looking for independence in the type of society that is looking to limit it. It was described as a ‘painful, gorgeous debut’ by Elle.

The novel is set in 1994. It tells the story of two different women. These are the housewife Izzy Keaveney, as well as the poet Colette Crowley. Colette has a family but had decided that she was going to leave them behind to pursue a married man in Dublin.

She ultimately returns home in County Donegal and has the goal of trying to salvage her life and pick up all of the pieces. Meanwhile her husband Shaun is a successful businessman and has not forgotten what she has done to the family. He refuses to give her access to the children.

Colette still wants to see her children, but the only way she is able to see them or spend time with them is by being helped by her neighbor Izzy, who is something of a go-between. Similarly to how Colette once felt, Izzy feels that she too is caught in the middle of a troubled marriage. The friendship that comes up between them is going to lead to tragedy for one of them– and freedom for the other woman.

Readers will have to tune in to this novel to find out what happens! This is the story about the limits that have been placed on women’s lives in Ireland just a generation ago. It is also about the consequences women have gone through while doing their best to get their independence. Alan Murrin shows readers the price that we often must pay in order to find freedom. Read this debut book from the award-winning Irish writer to follow along with every word.