 Michel Faber, in "The Guardian", described his control of tone, dialogue and narrative contour as "masterful".Ó Ceallaigh won the 2006 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and was the first Irish writer to be shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award.Ó Ceallaigh has spent much of his adult life in Eastern Europe, starting in Russia in the early nineteen-nineties.