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The Queen of Dirt Island: From the Booker-longlisted No.1 bestselling author of Strange Flowers
Donal Ryan
FREE Delivery in Ireland
Description for The Queen of Dirt Island: From the Booker-longlisted No.1 bestselling author of Strange Flowers
Paperback.
Discover the emotional, bestselling novel about four generations of women and the stories that bind them, from the Booker longlisted author Of Strange Flowers.
'One of the finest novelists writing today... a haunting, exquisite masterpiece.' RACHEL JOYCE
'Endlessly surprising and incredibly moving' DAVID NICHOLLS
'Beautiful, compassionate ... Donal Ryan at his inimitable best.' MAGGIE O'FARRELL
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The Aylward women are mad about each other, but you wouldn't always think it.
You'd have to know them - in spite of what neighbours might say about raised voices and dramatic scenes - to know that ... Read morethat their house is a place of peace, filled with love, a refuge from the sadness and cruelty of the world.
The head of the family, Nana, is a woman who has buried two sons and whose life has been the family farm.
Her daughter-in-law, Eileen, is estranged from her own parents, having 'shamed' them and given birth to Saoirse.
And then there's Saoirse herself, eavesdropping on lives she cannot comprehend.
It is only when they must battle for the inheritance of Dirt Island - a narrow strip of land adjacent to Eileen's childhood home - that they truly understand the roots that bind their lives together.
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'The prose drips like honey off a spoon' SUNDAY TIMES
'Beautifully poised, sad, poetic and human....I loved every single line.' IAN RANKIN
'A generous mosaic of a novel about the staying power of love and pride and history and family' COLUM McCANN
'His paragraphs are unnoticeably beautiful, his heart always on show' ANNE ENRIGHT
'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
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Product Details
Publisher
Transworld Publishers Ltd
Place of Publication
, United Kingdom
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 2 to 4 working days
About Donal Ryan
Donal Ryan is an award-winning author from Nenagh, County Tipperary, whose work has been published in over twenty languages to major critical acclaim. The Spinning Heart won the Guardian First Book Award, the EU Prize for Literature (Ireland), and Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards; it was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, longlisted for ... Read morethe Man Booker Prize and the Desmond Elliott Prize, and was voted 'Irish Book of the Decade'. His fourth novel, From a Low and Quiet Sea, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2018, and won the Jean Monnet Prize for European Literature. His novel, Strange Flowers, was voted Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, and was a number one bestseller, as was his most recent novel The Queen of Dirt Island, which was also shortlisted for Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. Donal lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick. He lives with his wife Anne Marie and their two children just outside Limerick City. Show Less
Reviews for The Queen of Dirt Island: From the Booker-longlisted No.1 bestselling author of Strange Flowers
This is a generous mosaic of a novel about the staying power of love and pride and history and family. While Donal Ryan is never afraid of "all the meanness and sorrow of the world," he also manages to excavate the thrilling beauties that hold us together. He manages, with wit and grace, to illuminate the anonymous ... Read morecorners of human experience and get at the underworld of our souls.
COLUM McCANN
Donal Ryan is one of the finest novelists writing today and this is a gem of a novel. Full of humanity, humility, humour, drama and mystery, his characters are so vivid you feel they are sitting outside, waiting for him to conjure them to life. He writes with grace and precision, with love indeed, about who we are and why, about family history and the ghosts we carry. A haunting, exquisite masterpiece.
RACHEL JOYCE
From its opening pages, this book exerts a quiet, propulsive hold over its reader. The three generations of Aylward women will break your heart and then put it back together again. It's a beautiful, compassionate novel - Donal Ryan at his inimitable best.
MAGGIE O'FARRELL
Beautifully poised, sad, poetic and human....I loved every single line.
IAN RANKIN
I truly enjoyed The Queen Of Dirt Island from its jolting first chapter to its calm, graceful conclusion. Now I'm on to Strange Flowers.
PAUL SIMON
Ryan's writing is so musical, so easily heard, that your eyes will dance through its pages.
Joanna Cannon, Guardian Book of the Day
'[A] master storyteller. The most vivid characters, so full of life. You read each short chapter wondering how he's crammed in so much heart and wonder, while the story itself ramps up to its quietly devastating and marvellous conclusion.'
KIT DE WAAL
'Donal Ryan repeatedly broke my heart and then soldered it back together with words of molten gold. The Queen of Dirt Island is a powerful tribute to mothers in all of their ferocity, tenderness and guilt. I loved this book with my whole patchwork heart. Eloquent, beautiful and threaded throughout with a joyful savage humour, a privilege to read, and re-read.'
LIZ NUGENT
I was thunderstruck by this exquisitely beautiful and powerful novel. This is writing of shimmering truthfulness, empathy and authority by the most consistently brilliant Irish writer of his generation.
JOSEPH O'CONNOR
The Queen of Dirt Island is the work of a master writer in full flow. Donal Ryan is uncommonly perceptive at finding greatness in humanity's goodness. This is his best novel yet.
RÓNÁN HESSION
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