Catch Niamh Prior, author of the John McGahern Prize-shortlisted Catchlights, at this year’s Liverpool Literary Festival.

Niamh will be attending the John McGahern Annual Book Prize event at 11.30am on Saturday 7th October alongside fellow shortlistee Niamh Mulvey and winner Aingeala Flannery. For more information, including how to book tickets, see here.

Now in its fourth year, the Prize was established by the University’s Institute of Irish Studies to promote new Irish fiction and to celebrate the memory of one of Ireland’s greatest masters of prose fiction, John McGahern (1934-2006). You can read more about the prize and this year’s three-book shortlist here.

Praised by novelist Liz Nugent for its “ingenious plotting and intelligent structuring”, Catchlights sets the innocence of childhood against the violence of adulthood, the joys of a passion against the horrors of an obsession, and the reality of death against the magic of life…

An Irish vagrant with a strange ability wanders Kew Gardens. She knows that the fine weather is going to break and the impending rain casts her mind back to a riverbank where a shady fisherman once asked for her help.

The same fisherman, years later, runs into a childhood friend and becomes intrigued by his wife. She in turn is charmed by his boldness and his confidence. One day she goes out for a walk and never returns.

In another time, in another place, a photographer notices two ghostly figures – of a man and a woman – on pictures developed from his vintage lens. The images become clearer with each roll of film, but his dogged investigation of the mystery could cost him dearly.

So spool out the lives in Catchlights: the past contains the present and future; shallow and deep acts of cruelty, love, selfishness and kindness reverberate for years.

Catchlights is out now. Grab your copy here. or, better, via your local bookshop or Bookshop.org.