Like many others, I have been waiting with bated breath for the publication of Irish literary sensation Sally Rooney’s fourth novel, Intermezzo, out in September. Rooney is both a distinctive voice in contemporary literature and the generational product of a particular moment in Irish history. For this reason, and in preparation for Intermezzo, I have been re-engaging in the work of some of her colleagues.

The Irish literary scene is thriving, so choosing just five other Irish writers who might appeal to Rooney fans is a daunting task. Some – like the matriarch of contemporary Irish literature Anne Enright or the one and only Claire Keegan – are so obvious they haven’t been mentioned.

Many others I have not mentioned, such as Rebecca Ivory, Maggie Armstrong, Niamh Mulvey, Caitríona Lally and Claire-Louise Bennett, have recently published work that has dispelled any doubts about the future health of Irish fiction.

1. EM Ready

Readers drawn to Rooney’s 2018 novel Normal People and its portrayal of austerity may turn to EM Reapy for a different perspective on this difficult moment in recent Irish history and its impact on a generation of young people.

Red Dirt (2016) is set in Australia and follows three young expats from recession-hit Ireland. While Normal People explores the subtle violence of austerity – the way it strips human life of its dignity – Red Dirt is often overtly violent. For example, when Fiona observes, “We disappear. We Irish,” she is referring not only to the transience of seasonal work, but also to fellow travelers who have actually disappeared.

Absence is a structuring force throughout – each of the three protagonists is aware of the “parked cars”, “unoccupied property” and “suicides” they have left behind. The novel is full of Rooney-esque depictions of class difference – of expats shouting that the Celtic Tiger is “just on a bloody holiday Down Under” and of characters repeating with amusement, “I’ve got a BA, a postgraduate degree and an MA” while doing unskilled, low-paid work.

Red Dirt is perhaps more nuanced than Rooney’s college-campus dramas, however, when it comes to those who cannot break free from their class backgrounds through intelligence or merit. One of these characters aptly asks, “How can someone like me stay in Ireland? Ireland is only sad when the smart guys leave. Ireland has never given a damn about people like us.”

2. Niamh Campbell

In Niamh Campbell’s debut novel This Happy (2020), protagonist Alannah’s memories of an affair with an older playwright mingle with her current marriage to a wealthy man.

While she interprets the former as an attempt to overcome her simple, social background, she is aware that her current life is only possible because she lives rent-free in her husband’s parents’ second home.

This Happy announced the arrival of an immensely promising talent. Campbell’s 2022 follow-up, We Were Young, more than delivered on that promise. A meditation on art-making and Dublin, gender politics and gentrification, it follows Cormac, an art lecturer in his thirties who goes through life with one affair with one younger woman after another.

Cormac’s bad behavior is a foreshadowing of a much larger reckoning that unfolds throughout the novel. His fame-seeking complacency is reflected, as his former student and long-suffering lover Nina points out, in his artistic practice.

For anyone interested in Rooney’s novel Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021) and his reflections on the political utility of art, this is the next read.

3. Nicole Flattery

Rooney is a fan of Nicole Flattery and wrote a blurb for her “bold, irreverent and incredibly funny” first short story collection, “Show Them A Good Time,” in 2019.

Set in global capitals like New York City and Paris, and in small, nameless towns in the Irish Midlands known only “to people with motion sickness,” this collection features female narrators as outsiders, and they see the uncanniness of the world we live in more clearly than anyone else.

While Show Them A Good Time is anchored in the present (mid-1990s to present), Flattery’s debut novel Nothing Special (2023) is set in the Swinging Sixties. The novel’s captivating narrator, Mae, is a typist in Andy Warhol’s New York studio The Factory.

As one of the characters in Show Them A Good Time observes, “History didn’t happen in my town, not for me.” Teenager Mae witnesses it being made—and yet is no less alienated.

4. Michael Magee

Michael Magee was well known among literary circles long before the publication of his debut novel, Close To Home, in 2023. His work has appeared in numerous Irish literary magazines, and he is fiction editor of The Tangerine Magazine, which he co-founded in 2016.

Since then, Magee has been shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year award, won the Nero Book Awards in his category, and has been awarded both the Waterstones Irish Book of the Year and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.

While Sally Rooney delves deeply into how college politics, with a capital P, mix with the interpersonal and romantic politics of young adulthood, Magee applies similar considerations to the dreaded post-graduation phase.

Close To Home is set in Magee’s hometown of Belfast, where the protagonist Seán has returned after studying in the UK. This homecoming (to which the title refers) is ambivalent, as he tries to build an adult life in his hometown, which is plagued by structural youth unemployment and the ongoing effects of the Northern Ireland conflict.

Fans of Rooney might also enjoy Magee’s interview with her three months after the release of Conversations With Friends (2017).

5. Sara Baume

West Cork-based writer and artist Sara Baume is, in my opinion, one of the most exciting figures in contemporary Irish literature.

Their Costa Book Award-winning debut, Spill, Simmer, Falter (2015), traces the relationship between a lonely old man and the stray, one-eyed dog he takes in. Their next two books, A Line Made By Walking (2017) and Handiwork (2020), weave together visual art, art history and literary narrative.

In the first novel, 25-year-old artist Frankie suffers a nervous breakdown that causes her to leave the city and her menial job as a curator and move to her recently deceased grandmother’s house in the middle of nowhere. There she begins to photograph the dead animals she finds in her new surroundings. The novel’s description of the deep loneliness one feels when living in a world that is often uncaring and cruel moved me to tears more than once.

Baume’s latest novel, Seven Steeples (2022), follows a similar premise, but this time it focuses on a couple who move from the city to the country in search of a good life. In this respect—Baume’s attempt to find a good life and the place of art in it—she most resembles Rooney from Beautiful World, Where Are You.

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