Fiction Book Group - Queen of Dirt Island, Donal Ryan

Queen of Dirt Island cover image

The August Fiction Book Group will be meeting via Zoom

Monday, August 14th • 6:30 PM ET / 11:30 PM IST via Zoom
Session open to all, no registration required.

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From the Booker longlisted author, and an Irish Times No.1 bestseller - a searing, jubilant novel about four generations of women and the stories that bind them.

This is a story about family, about all of the things it should be - and sometimes isn't.

In Nenagh, County Tipperary, four generations of Aylward women live and love. 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.

'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 familyCOLUM McCANN

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

'Endlessly surprising and incredibly moving' DAVID NICHOLLS

Donal Ryan

About the Author

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 the 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 most recent novel, Strange Flowers, was voted Novel 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.


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