Heart, Be at Peace

Winner of the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year. The stunning new book from the Booker Prize-listed, bestselling author of Strange Flowers and The Queen of Dirt Island

'Beautiful...a book full of love and hope, more needed in these days than ever' Kit de Waal

'I am blown away by the ambition and scope of this exquisite piece of writing...sublime in both its sentiment and beauty' Rachel Joyce

Some things can send a heart spinning; others will crack it in two...

In a small town in rural Ireland, the local people have weathered the storms of economic collapse and are looking towards the future. The jobs are back, the dramas of the past seemingly lulled, and although the town bears the marks of its history, new stories are unfolding.

But a fresh menace is creeping around the lakeshore and the lanes of the town, and the peace of the community is about to be shattered in an unimaginable way. Young people are being drawn towards the promise of fast money whilst the generation above them tries to push back the tide of an enemy no one can touch…

Told in twenty-one voices, Heart, be at Peace is a heartfelt, lyrical novel that can be read independently, or as a companion to Donal Ryan’s multi-award-winning novel, TheSpinning Heart, voted ‘The Irish Book of the Decade’.

*****

PRAISE FOR DONAL RYAN:

'One of the finest novelists writing today.' RACHEL JOYCE

'His paragraphs are unnoticeably beautiful, his heart always on show' ANNE ENRIGHT

'Endlessly surprising and incredibly moving' DAVID NICHOLLS

'A life-enhancing talent' SEBASTIAN BARRY

'I would struggle to think of any other Irish author working today who writes with as much compassion as Donal Ryan' LOUISE O'NEILL

'Beautiful, compassionate...Donal Ryan at his inimitable best.' MAGGIE O'FARRELL

'Beautifully poised, sad, poetic and human....I loved every single line.' IAN RANKIN

'The prose drips like honey off a spoon' SUNDAY TIMES

Nero Book Awards Shortlisted, 2024
Irish Times bestseller, August 2024


Genre: Literary Fiction

"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

"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

"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