Shortlisted for the Booker, passed among families and picked up by Cillian Murphy for the big screen, the Irish writer’s razor-sharp fiction leaves you wanting more

Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These, shortlisted for the Booker prize in 2022, is a fitting December read – a quiet yet powerful book set in the lead-up to Christmas which is short enough to read in snatched moments between festivities. Once you’ve read it, you can also go and see its newly released film adaptation, produced by and starring Cillian Murphy. And if you can’t get enough of Keegan’s razor-sharp fiction after that, there are plenty of other stories by the acclaimed Irish author to try. Novelist Megan Nolan suggests some good places to begin.

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