Stunning debut novel from a new Irish writer.

Winner of Guardian First Book Award 2013 and Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Awards: Book of the Year 2013. Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2013.

"I was hugely impressed by The Spinning Heart. There will be many novels which explore the effect of the crash on the people of Ireland but I can't imagine a more original, more perceptive or more passionate work than this. Outstanding." -- John Boyne "Most beautifully written and plotted. What a writer! It is amazing to read about such grief and pain and yet end up elevated by the quality of the writing. A wonderful book." -- Jennifer Johnston "An ambitious exploration of contemporary Ireland, The Spinning Heart uncovers a fragmented, troubled society struggling under the weight of betrayal and regret." -- Sorcha Hamilton The Irish Times ".a first novel that's . up-to-date in its concerns but that also transcends the merely topical in its bleak, if often savagely funny, vision of a rural Ireland . There are echoes . of Patrick McCabe's stray sod country, though Tipperary-born Donal Ryan has an imaginative insight into his characters that's all his own and a furious energy to his prose that gives arrestingly vivid life to these blighted souls. . a darkly persuasive debut." -- John Boland Irish Independent "[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 was born in a village in north Tipperary, a stroll from the shores of Lough Derg. Donal wrote the first draft of The Spinning Heart in the long summer evenings of 2010, and has also completed a second novel. He lives with his wife Anne Marie and two children just outside Limerick City.