The Spinning Heart

Donal Ryan is from Nenagh in County Tipperary. His first three novels, The Spinning Heart, The Thing About December and All We Shall Know, and his short story collection A Slanting of the Sun, have all been published to major acclaim. The Spinning Heart won the Guardian First Book Award, the EU Prize for Literature (Ireland), and Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards; it was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Desmond Elliott Prize, and was voted 'Irish Book of the Decade'. His fourth novel, From a Low and Quiet Sea, was longlisted for Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2018.
A former civil servant, Donal lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick. He lives with his wife Anne Marie and their two children just outside Limerick City.

"[An] extraordinarily accomplished first novel. here is a new Irish writer of the very first order. Donal Ryan is the real deal. . a brilliantly realised, utterly resonant state-of-the-nation landscape . Ryan's feat is considerable. Narrative and character information is distributed among so many different voices and yet we never feel at a loss. Even the characters on the margins of the story . add compelling colour and texture. Best of all, Ryan's ear for speech is acute. . Given a novel as brilliantly realised as The Spinning Heart, I see no reason to look anywhere but the present. For Donal Ryan, the future is now." -- Declan Hughes Sunday Independent "Donal Ryan's precise and evocative debut . is a textured account of a community as it was during a brief moment of time. . unexpectedly tender . Ryan's prism of life and lives is compellingly humane. . This is an exciting, relevant and believable contemporary novel about the lost and the wounded that listens to the present without discarding either the sins of the fathers or the literary legacy of the past." -- Eileen Battersby The Irish Times "Powerful and affecting ... [a] superb, unforgettable and topical debut." The Times "Humane, funny, moving and relevant, this is extremely impressive stuff." Daily Mail "A formidable debut, with snatches of the savage comedy of Patrick McCabe and a wistful cadence all its own." Daily Telegraph