Fitzcarraldo Editions publisher Jacques Testard has acquired UK & Commonwealth rights excluding Canada, with exclusivity in Europe, to Keith Ridgway’s novel Dooneen from Laurence Laluyaux at RCW. Ridgway’s eighth work of fiction has also been acquired by Barbara Epler at New Directions. The book will appear simultaneously with both presses in June 2026.
In Dooneen, Bartholomew Port, known to all as Mew, steps into the bushes in a London park and steps out of the bushes in a Dublin one. Not only that – there are no cars; there are moving footpaths; there is no church; everything seems quite queer. Mew has arrived in a Dublin that is alive with song, with rumour, with ghosts, and with an unmistakable sense of insurgency. An unravelling, an impossibility, a gathering of voices and a single dream, Dooneen is the layered, allusive and wildly original new novel from Keith Ridgway, ‘one of Ireland’s best writers, in a country with no shortage of them’ (Times).
Keith Ridgway is a Dubliner living in London. His previous novels include A Shock (winner of the 2022 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction), Hawthorn & Child and Animals. He has been awarded the Prix Fémina Étranger and Premier Roman Étranger, the O Henry award, and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Dooneen is his first novel to be published by Fitzcarraldo Editions.
Fitzcarraldo Editions publisher Jacques Testard said: ‘I have been a huge fan of Keith Ridgway’s writing ever since reading Hawthorn & Child when it was published a decade ago, and I am very excited now to get to work with him on Dooneen. Finally, someone has written the Great Dublin Novel! It is an extraordinary book, funny and odd and moving and angry, quite unlike anything else in contemporary fiction, and an utterly unique portrayal of Dublin. I’m very excited for people to read it and hope this will be the first of many books we publish together.’
New Directions publisher Barbara Epler added: ‘The one rotten thing about loving a writer as addictively exhilarating as Keith Ridgway is waiting for a new book. I’ve been parched, but – drinking in Dooneen that desert is now behind me, and now I can’t wait for everyone else to read it too. Nothing makes me happier than setting loose on the world such a nonpareil novel: a work at once so groundbreaking, wickedly profane, touching, funny and enthralling. It’s also perfect that Keith is now with Fitzcarraldo, just the right home for him.’
Keith Ridgway said: ‘Having been a Fitzcarraldo reader since the earliest days, it is a delight for me to now become a Fitzcarraldo writer. Dooneen means a lot to me, in no small part because it marks my fictional return to my home city of Dublin. I’m very proud that it is to be published by two of the best English-language publishers we have – New Directions, and Fitzcarraldo.’
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