George R.R. Martin Wins International Recognition at An Post Irish Book Awards

In recent years, fantasy and sci-fi author George R.R. Martin has become a household name, mainly due to the success of his fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, which was adapted into the massively successful TV show Game of Thrones by HBO. Martin has enjoyed an enormous amount of success, and that continued earlier this week when he was honoured with the International Recognition Award by the An Post Irish Book Awards for his contributions to the fantasy and sci-fi genre.

As The Book Seller reports, the US author received the award on Tuesday at a special event in the GPO, O’Connell Street, Dublin, tonight, ahead of the 2019 awards event which will be hosted on 20th November at the Dublin Convention Centre. The organizers released a statement saying: “The honour is being bestowed on Martin in recognition of his significant contribution to fantasy and science fiction over the last four decades.” Commenting on the award, Martin said: “I am honoured to be receiving this award and thankful to the people of Ireland for bestowing it upon me.”

Chair of the An Post Irish Book Awards, Maria Dickenson, said: “A Song of Ice and Fire has become much more than a landmark series of books. The series has been elevated to the ultimate pantheon of J R R Tolkien and C S Lewis. A Game of Thrones is now an iconic artefact of popular culture, a cottage industry, a primer for the conduct of foreign policy among nations, the locus for impassioned debates about the very nature of power and the interplay of good and evil.  It looms large in the collective imagination of millions of fans, not least in Ireland, and in particular in Northern Ireland, now known as The Home of Thrones.”

Since the first book in the series was published, Martin has sold over 5.95 million books for £48.1m through his publisher Nielsen. The long=awaited next book in the series, The Winds of Winter, is hotly anticipated and is expected in the next year or so.