Heart, Be at Peace

Donal Ryan

Hardcover

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Winner of the Irish Book of the Year
Shortlisted for the Nero Novel of the Year
From one of the most acclaimed Irish writers today, a new novel about smalltown Ireland that explores a community on the mend and the power of love and trauma to both bring people together and divide them

"I said it before. Madness comes circling around. Ten-year cycles, as true as the sun will rise. . ."

In a small town in Ireland, the local people have weathered the storm of economic collapse and now look to the future: The jobs are back, the dramas of the past seemingly lulled, and although the town bears the scars of its history, new stories have begun to unfold.

But an insidious menace now creeps through back-alley shadows and into the lives of the townspeople. Old grudges fester and new ones arise. Young people are lured by the promise of fast money while the generation above them tries to hold back the tide of an enemy beyond their control. And the peace of this town is about to be shattered in an unimaginable way.

A stunning, lyrical novel told in twenty-one voices, Heart, Be at Peace reveals a community that together looks to overcome the betrayals, secrets, and grudges that can divide families, neighbors, and entire generations.

Book Details

Publisher: Viking
Publish Date: May 20th, 2025
Pages: 208
Language: English
Edition: undefined - undefined
Dimensions: 8.25in - 5.50in - 0.53in - 0.75lb
EAN: 9780593834640
Categories: • Literary• Small Town & Rural• World Literature - Ireland - General

About the Author

Donal Ryan is a novelist and short story writer from Nenagh, County Tipperary, Ireland. He has won several national and international awards for his fiction, and has twice been nominated for the Booker Prize. His work has been adapted for stage and screen and translated into over twenty languages. Donal is a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Limerick, and he lives with his wife, Anne Marie, and their two children.

Praise for this book

"Ryan dives deep into his characters' hopes and grievances, drawing out their voices with such precision that you can almost hear their breath between words. . . .Ryan's prose is poetic but never florid, the book's pacing is perfect and the well-controlled plot has us holding on for revelation and an unpredictable denouement." ―Financial Times

"An astute mosaic. Add to that Ryan's gift for capturing the foolishness and fakery of human nature and the lyrical power of Irish small-town gossip . . . and you have a portrait of modern Ireland through a series of hard minds and sometimes kind hearts." ―The Independent (London)

"[The novel is] a kind of simulacrum of life, as if we have been landed in this village, have a chance to overhear its inhabitants' most private thoughts, move from one house to another, sit in the pub, discover who believes who is to blame for what, and what can be excused or forgiven." ―The Guardian

"Beautiful and moving. . .serves up heartbreak and hope in equal measure." ―The Lady

"It's all there. Donal's trademark big heart and understanding of what it is to be human, all of it on the page and somehow beyond it. I loved it from the first page to the last. . .there are more moments of genius in this book than I care to mention. Beautiful. . .a book full of love and hope, more needed in these days than ever." ―Kit de Waal, author of My Name is Leon

"Any new book by Donal Ryan is something to celebrate and Heart, Be at Peace is no exception. He is a powerful story teller immersed in all the intricacies of human relationships, and once again he brings us a novel with a heart as big as the community he describes. Clear-eyed, deeply ambitious, sharp, lyrical as always, by turns funny and terrifying, Donal Ryan shines his light in the darkest corners, and finds something for us to love. I am blown away by the ambition and scope of this exquisite piece of writing: Heart, Be at Peace is sublime in both its sentiment and beauty." ―Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

"This is Donal Ryan at his most assured, moving deftly between voices, fully inhabiting every character, breaking his poor readers' hearts. Every chapter's a tiny epic. Every sentence seems to sing. Ryan's writing is both of the moment and utterly timeless in its ability to capture the essence of what it means to be alive, to love, to grieve and cling to hope." --Jan Carson, author of The Raptures