Best 25 Irish books of the 21st century: how readers voted

The Irish Times assembled a panel of 60 experts – authors, critics, academics, festival curators, booksellers and journalists – to decide the best Irish novels and short story collections of the years 2000-2025. The result was a ranked list of 100 works of fiction, with Milkman by Anna Burns (2018) decided as the best Irish book of the 21st century. We then asked readers to have their say on what they consider to be the best books from the top 25 – the result of which was quite different from our experts’ ranking.