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by Donal Ryan (Author)
Winner of the European Prize for Literature
Short stories that capture the brutal beauty of the human heart in all its failings, hopes, and quiet triumphs--from one of "the most exciting voices in contemporary Irish fiction" (The Sunday Independent) Donal Ryan's short stories pick up where his acclaimed novels The Spinning Heart and The Thing About December left off, dealing with dramas set in motion by loneliness and displacement and revealing stories of passion and desire where less astute observers might fail to detect the humanity that roils beneath the surface. Sometimes these dramas are found in ordinary, mundane situations; sometimes they are triggered by a fateful encounter or a tragic decision. At the heart of these stories, crucially, is how people are drawn to each other and cling to love when and where it can be found. In a number of the these stories, emotional bonds are forged by traumatic events caused by one of the characters--between an old man and the frightened young burglar left to guard him while his brother is beaten; between another young man and the mother of a girl whose death he caused when he crashed his car; between a lonely middle-aged shopkeeper and her assistant. Disconnection and new discoveries pervade stories involving emigration (an Irish priest in war-torn Syria) or immigration (an African refugee in Ireland). Some of the stories are set in the same small town in rural Ireland as the novels, with names that will be familiar to Ryan's readers.Author Biography
Donal Ryan, originally from Nenagh, County Tipperary, is the author of multiple #1 bestselling novels and a short story collection. His work has received numerous accolades, including the European Union Prize for Literature, the Guardian First Book Award, and six Irish Book Awards. He has twice been longlisted for the Booker Prize--for The Spinning Heart and From a Low and Quiet Sea--and has also been shortlisted for the Costa Book Award and the Dublin International Literary Award. The Spinning Heart was voted Irish Book of the Decade in 2016. His latest novel, Heart Be at Peace, won both Novel of the Year and Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, and was shortlisted for the Nero Book Awards. He lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick and lives in Castletroy with his wife and two children.
