We are delighted to welcome acclaimed author Donal Ryan to Deansgate, celebrating the release of his stunning new novel Where Are the Kings.

From the author of the Orwell Prize-winning Heart, Be at Peace and the Booker-nominated The Spinning Heart and From a Low and Quiet Sea, comes an unforgettable, funny, intensely moving novel about a young boy coming of age after the loss of his mother.

Donal joins us to discuss this beautifully poignant novel with bestselling author Joanna Cannon. This event consists of a talk and audience Q&A followed by a signing.

About Where Are the Kings

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?

About the Author

Donal Ryan is a novelist and short story-writer from Nenagh, Co. Tipperary. 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, where he lives with his wife Anne Marie and their two children.