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All Them Dogs

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All Them Dogs

By: Djamel White
Narrated by: Conor Dunne
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LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2026

'An electrifying debut' Economist
'Explosive' Observer
'One of the debuts of the year' Irish Times
'A powerful new voice in Irish literature' Guardian
'A stylish, adroit and gritty debut' Anne Enright
'A book you inhale, devour, grapple with, and reel from more than read' Marlon James

Things are different since Tony Ward landed back in town. The West Dublin gangland has changed. His old mentor is dead, and his best pal Kenny Boyle is on the straight and narrow.

After five years keeping quiet across the way, Tony is keen to reinstate himself, and when the opportunity arises to work side by side with Darren 'Flute' Walsh, a top enforcer of notorious crime boss Aengus Lavelle, it feels like a no brainer.

Biting off more than he can chew has never bothered Tony Ward, but Flute Walsh is not the meek, quiet boy Tony remembers from school. Brooding, stoic, and unpredictably dangerous, Tony finds himself drawn to his new associate in more ways than one.

With retribution from his past actions always close in the rear view, the protection offered by Flute's standing in the gang is crucial. But how safe is Tony really, when a mutual attraction starts to complicate matters?

By turns savage, thrilling and unexpectedly tender, All Them Dogs is a gripping story of violence, lust, and greed that explores one man's struggles to find his place in an unsparing world.

'Exhilarating and often frightening . . . a hugely satisfying read' Roddy Doyle
'As beautiful and tough as an uncut jewel' Colin Walsh
'A moving, fast-paced novel . . . written in prose at once glittering and tender' Sarah Moss
'Frenetic and exhilarating . . . has the energy and drama of a shoot-out' Rob Doyle©2026 Djamel White Crime Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction World Literature Crime Exciting Heartfelt Scary Tear-jerking Emotionally Gripping
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Critic reviews

One of the debuts of the year
In the best Irish style, Djamel White uses a local voice to blast through language and make it new. His hero, Tony Ward, is a bittersweet confection of self-defeating swagger . . . a stylish, adroit and gritty debut (Anne Enright, Booker Prize-winning author of THE GATHERING)
All Them Dogs is all that- a book you inhale, devour, grapple with, and reel from more than read. A coming-of-age novel for an age that comes breathing down the back of your neck. The kind of book where everything is on the edge of a knife and where love, like death, is either a kiss or a bullet away (Marlon James, Booker Prize-winning author of A BRIEF HISTORY OF SEVEN KILLINGS)
Exhilarating and often frightening - Djamel White's first novel is a hugely satisfying read. It adds new streets to Dublin's literary map (Roddy Doyle, Booker Prize-winning author of PADDY CLARKE HA HA HA)
As beautiful and tough as an uncut jewel, this kinetic and claustrophobic novel takes you deep into a darkness where desire, sex and violence become dangerously, seductively tangled (Colin Walsh, author of Sunday Times bestseller, KALA)
A moving, fast-paced novel about masculinity, violence and vulnerability, set in parts of Dublin that rarely appear in literature and written in prose at once glittering and tender (Sarah Moss, author of GHOST WALL)
Dublin is Vice City in Djamel White's frenetic and exhilarating debut novel. All Them Dogs has the energy and drama of a shoot-out (Rob Doyle, author of CAMEO)
All Them Dogs is a claustrophobic masterpiece-an emotionally devastating literary crime novel set in Dublin's underworld, where violence, poverty, and toxic masculinity form a brutal backdrop to a brilliantly tender love story. Here is an intimate tale of violence and desire that is as sharp as the knives wielded on the page. Djamel White has taken a familiar genre and turned it into something bright and new, burning like white phosphorus (Isaac Fitzgerald, NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author of DIRTBAG, MASSACHUSETTS)
All Them Dogs is as compelling as your favourite gangster movie, as profound as your favourite novel. So sexy and tender and dangerous and poetic and frightening (August Thompson, author of ANYONE'S GHOST)
Djamel White's outstanding debut charts the giddy, chaotic rise and fall of Tony Ward, a sensitive, volatile gangster vivid with ambition and desire. Propulsive, incendiary storytelling renders viscerally the stylish squalor and delirious brutality of Dublin's underworld; Ward's supple, engaging voice blends kinetic force with perceptive, lyrical insight. A dazzling, unsettling, fever dream of a novel (Declan Hughes)
A pummelling debut
White is backed by serious pedigree in the publishing world . . . There will be a lot of anticipation for All Them Dogs
[A] breathless debut . . . Dublin's answer to Top Boy
All stars
Most relevant
Listened to this the past week in my car going to work. It's a relatively short audiobook at around 6hrs. This is about Irish gangsters. It took a bit of getting used to at first with the thick,Irish accent,but you do get used to it. I have to say, it was a very well written,descriptive book. It kept me compelled. Not one redeemable or likeable character in the whole book it has to be said,but,there were several times my jaw hit the floor! I won't give anything else away,but the ending actually had me gripped to my seat,wondering how the outcome would go! It will be interesting to see if it is a contender for the Booker Shortlist! Recommended!

An Irish Corker!

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The authenticity of the story and how the real experience of Dublin's underworld could be felt throughout this story was refreshing as many authors have failed to hit the mark with this subject matter. The story was gritty and dark with very real human stories intertwined with violence, fear and loss. I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of this book and feel almost sad that it has ended.

Authentic, raw and surprisingly heartfelt.

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Gripping story that makes for edge-of-your-seat listening. Shocking, moving, visceral telling of life in Ireland

Stark reality of gang life in Dublin

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I’ve literally just finished All Them Dogs, and I’m not going to overthink the rating.

Five stars.

No messing around.

This is a gritty, violent, angry, tender and exhilarating novel that dropped me into a world I know absolutely nothing about and somehow made it feel horribly immediate.

Tony returns to Ireland after years away, carrying the consequences of a terrible act committed in retaliation for another killing. He comes back wanting some version of the life, status and affiliations he once had, but the world he re-enters is governed by loyalty, honour, betrayal, retribution and the kind of choices that narrow very quickly once you’ve made them.

And then there is Flute.

Flute was the character I didn’t expect, and I think Tony is equally unexpected to him. Their relationship becomes one of the most tender parts of a novel otherwise full of brutality. I don’t want to say much more because the way that connection develops deserves to be experienced rather than explained, but it adds a vulnerability to Tony that made the whole story hit harder.

For me, this is also a novel about masculinity. About the codes men live by, the things they will do to maintain honour, the ways violence becomes both language and currency, and what happens when affection enters a world where softness can be dangerous.

The title kept coming back to me too. There is that old saying about lying down with dogs and getting up with fleas, and Tony’s predicament increasingly feels like the consequence of the world he has chosen to inhabit. That doesn’t make what happens to him easy to watch. If anything, it makes it more painful because so much of it feels tragically avoidable.

Life is cheap in this novel. People are hurt because they are useful, inconvenient, disloyal, unlucky, or simply standing too close to someone else’s problem. I would not want to live within this world for five minutes, and I certainly wouldn’t want to accidentally wander into it as an innocent bystander.

And yet the novel isn’t relentlessly bleak.

There is love in it.

There is loyalty.

There are moments of tenderness that matter precisely because of everything surrounding them.

The writing is excellent: muscular, tense, aggressive when it needs to be, but never without feeling. The atmosphere was so vivid that while I was listening I felt almost uncomfortably close to Tony’s experience, as though I’d been dropped into his life and had no way out.

The ending was intense. “Exciting” feels like a strange word to use given what is happening, but that is genuinely how it felt to listen to. The tension builds and builds until the whole thing becomes completely absorbing.

I also have to give enormous credit to audiobook narrator Conor Dunne, whose performance was superb. The narration gave the story such energy and immediacy that I genuinely want to find some way of telling him how good I thought he was.

I can’t judge how accurately this depicts the criminal world it portrays because it is completely outside my experience. What I can say is that, as a piece of fiction, it felt convincing. The characters felt real, the danger felt real, and the emotional stakes absolutely worked for me.

This is one of those rare books where I reached the end and knew the rating immediately.

Powerful. Brutal. Tender. Exhilarating.

Five stars.

And if this doesn’t make the Booker shortlist, I’ll be disappointed.

Fantastic

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Liked descriptive writing and dialogue. Gangland theme a bit cliched but saved by complexity of character Tony.

Rattling good story

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