Where are the Kings

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From the winner of the Orwell Prize for Fiction and the Irish Book of the Year...

‘Beautiful, hilarious and completely gripping…a story filled with love that shines a light on all the hidden places’ RACHEL JOYCE

‘Donal Ryan uncovers the poetry that hides within ordinary life. He also conjures up characters so solid, so complete and authentic, it immediately feels as though you have known them for your entire life’ JOANNA CANNON

'Warm, irreverent and humane' JAN CARSON

Jack is just twelve years old when he rushes down the hill after his mother's car on his bike, desperate to reach her before she reaches the lake.

What happens next cannot be undone. Jack's life changes just at the moment he is entering those dizzying years when he will transition from boy to man; when nothing makes sense at the best of times.

Yet Jack is not alone. Enveloped as he is by his extended family - his ferociously loving Nana; Grandad, given to sudden bursts of rage; his earthy uncles Haulie and Theo who want to show him what it means to be a man, and the irascible JJ who resents him deeply. Then there is beautiful aunt Rose, whose mere presence ignites every atom in his changing body.

But how can a boy with so many questions, in a family with so many secrets, understand the person he is becoming? Without his mother to ground him on the earth, will he spin off into the stars?

Beautiful, hilarious and completely gripping… I fell in love with the whole family, the sheer goodness of them, the way Donal Ryan gets inside Jack’s heart and head and explores the gap between them, what he knows and feels… a story filled with love that shines a light on all the hidden places. My life is better because of it.
Rachel Joyce, author of The Homemade God

I have been a fan of Donal's writing for the longest time and the wonderful THE QUEEN OF DIRT ISLAND was one of the first novels I reviewed for The Guardian. This novel though... oh my heart. To explore grief through the eyes of a child, and to do it so exquisitely and so elegantly, is just mind-blowing. The thing I LOVE about Donal Ryan's writing is that he uncovers the poetry that hides within ordinary life. He also conjures up characters so solid, so complete and authentic, it immediately feels as though you have known them for your entire life.
Joanna Cannon, author of The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

About Donal Ryan

Donal Ryan, from Nenagh, County Tipperary, has published seven number one bestselling novels and a short story collection. He has won several awards for his fiction, including the European Union Prize for Literature, the Guardian First Book Award and six Irish Book Awards, and has been shortlisted for several more, including the Costa Book Award and the Dublin International Literary Award. He was nominated for the Booker Prize in 2013 for his debut novel, The Spinning Heart, and again in 2018, for his fourth novel, From A Low and Quiet Sea. The Spinning Heart was voted Irish Book of the Decade in 2016. In 2021 Donal became the first Irish writer to be awarded the Jean Monnet Prize for European Literature. His most recent 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 Novel of the Year at the Nero Book Awards. His work has been adapted for stage and screen and translated into over twenty languages. Donal has lectured in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick since 2014 and lives in Castletroy with his wife Anne Marie and their two children.

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