# The 11 Best Irish Novels of All Time

> Dublin streets, small-town secrets and one very famous count. Experimental modernists and quiet contemporary voices argue it out.

*By YPB Team · Published October 16, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-11-best-irish-novels-of-all-time*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Ulysses** — score 1000/1000
   James Joyce's 1922 modernist day in Dublin.
2. **The Butcher Boy** — score 877/1000
   Patrick McCabe's 1992 darkly comic novel of a boy in a small town.
3. **Dracula** — score 709/1000
   Bram Stoker's 1897 gothic horror novel.
4. **The Sea** — score 600/1000
   John Banville's 2005 Booker winner about grief and memory.
5. **The Spinning Heart** — score 600/1000
   Donal Ryan's 2012 chorus of voices in a small town after the crash.
6. **Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man** — score 600/1000
   Joyce's 1916 novel following Stephen Dedalus.
7. **Normal People** — score 491/1000
   Sally Rooney's 2018 novel about a couple across years.
8. **The Gathering** — score 491/1000
   Anne Enright's 2007 Booker winner on a family after a death.
9. **The Third Policeman** — score 360/1000
   Flann O'Brien's surreal murder story, published in 1967.
10. **Gulliver's Travels** — score 360/1000
   Jonathan Swift's 1726 satire.
11. **At Swim-Two-Birds** — score 0/1000
   Flann O'Brien's 1939 comic metafiction.

Tags: books, classics, ireland