Donal Ryan wins An Post Irish Novel of the Year Award for Heart, Be at Peace

Donal Ryan has come out on top again at this year’s Irish Book Awards. Heart, Be at Peace, described as a “companion” to his Book of the Year-winning 2012 debut, The Spinning Heart, has won this year’s Novel of the Year Award. He also won in 2020 with Strange Flowers. “Ryan gets the tricky act of the sequel just right,” The Irish Times review said, admiring how his 21 characters’ storylines “dovetail to an absorbing, empathetic story of a community in trouble”, the crisis this time caused by drugs, not the financial crash.
This could be the year of the sequel. Roddy Doyle’s The Women Behind the Door, the third in a trilogy, and Colm Tóibín’s Long Island, his follow-up to Brooklyn, also made the shortlist for Novel of the Year. Long Island is neck and neck with Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These, published first in 2022, to be Ireland’s bestselling book of 2024. Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo is in third place. Rooney won this year’s Author of the Year Award.
Clair Wills’s exploration of her family’s and Irish society’s guilty secrets – Missing Persons, or My Grandmother’s Secrets – is 2024′s Non-Fiction Book of the Year. The Irish Times review called it an “utterly engaging, fearless and acute memoir”.
Former Irish rugby captain Johnny Sexton won Sports Book of the Year with his autobiography, Obsessed, pipping Conor Niland to the post, despite the former tennis player having just won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year for his memoir, The Racket.
Jane Casey won Crime Fiction Book of the Year for her latest Maeve Kerrigan mystery, A Stranger in the Family, while Alan Murrin won newcomer of the year for his debut novel, The Coast Road, set in the run-up to the 1995 divorce referendum, about women searching for independence in a claustrophobic society that sought to limit it.
“The An Post Irish Book Awards has firmly become a cornerstone of the Irish literary landscape and we’re incredibly proud of the collaboration and passion that has driven its success,” said Larry Mac Hale, chairperson of the An Post Irish Book Awards.
“This past year has seen an exciting array of Irish books published, showcasing not only the voices of renowned authors, but also introducing fresh, exceptional talent who are enriching Ireland’s literary tradition.”
Author Paul Howard, best known for his Ross O’Carroll-Kelly series, was given a Special Recognition Award to acknowledge his contribution to the Irish publishing industry over the past 25 years. His Ross books have sold more than 1.5 million copies. While Don’t Look Back in Ongar is the last of the series, his popular character lives on in his Irish Times column every Saturday. A four-time Irish Book Award winner, Howard has also ghostwritten a number of autobiographies and co-wrote Roddy Collins’s memoir The Rodfather.
Martin Waddell received the Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award. The first children’s writer to receive the award, he is best known for Owl Babies, illustrated by Patrick Benson, and the Little Bear books, illustrated by Barbara Firth. He joins distinguished recipients including Anne Enright, Sebastian Barry, Eavan Boland and Colm Tóibín.
This year’s An Post Irish Book of the Year, selected by judges Maria Dickenson (chair), Madeleine Keane, Cyril McGrane, Elaina Ryan and Alex Clark, will be revealed during a one-hour television special, hosted by Oliver Callan, on RTÉ One on December 19th.