Michael Crummey has won the 2025 Dublin Literary Award.

Crummey’s novel The Adversary (Knopf Canada/PRHC) was one of six titles shortlisted for the €100,000 prize, which is worth about $147,000. The other shortlisted titles were Not a River by Selva Almada, translated by Annie McDermott; We Are Light by Gerda Blees, translated by Michele Hutchison; James by Percival Everett; Prophet Song by Paul Lynch; and Northwoods by Daniel Mason.

This year marks the 30th year for the prize, which honours excellence in world literature. Titles are nominated to the longlist by public libraries from around the world. The shortlisted titles were chosen from a 71-title longlist announced in January. Crummey was one of six Canadian writers on the longlist.

Crummey was named the winner by Dublin Lord Mayor Emma Blain at a ceremony on May 22 during the International Literature Festival Dublin. In accepting the award, Crummey called the win “the unlikeliest, the most unreal thing that has ever happened to me,” and thanked his agent, Martha Webb, and editor, Martha Kanya-Forstner, both of whom were in attendance. 

The selections for this year’s prize were made by a jury composed of Dutch author Gerbrand Bakker; Irish author and columnist Martina Devlin; Paris-based writer, poet, translator, musician, and editor Fiona Sze-Lorrain; professor and freelance literary journalist Leonard Cassuto; and poet and editor Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe.

The Adversary is set in a Newfoundland harbour town in the 19th century, and has at its heart a sibling rivalry that animates the town’s economy. In their citation, the jury said the book “compellingly and convincingly immerses its readers in a world previously lost to fiction, and almost lost to memory: a Newfoundland outport from the early years of the colony, connected to the world outside only by the occasional supply ship.”

Crummey is the third Canadian writer to win the award; Alistair Macleod was the winner in 2001 for No Great Mischief, and Rawi Hage won in 2008 for De Niro’s Game.