The winner of the An Post Irish Book of the Year on why Heart, Be At Peace is the novel his late mother wanted him to write and why his focus is ‘the huge mass of people that make up the bulk of this country’
‘Heart, Be at Peace was the easiest book I ever wrote’: Donal Ryan in Co Limerick this week. Photo: Eamon Ward
Donal Ryan is locked out of his house. Several minutes after our Zoom interview was scheduled to start, he appears suddenly on my computer screen, standing in his back garden, dressed in a black beanie and winter coat. His nose and cheeks are pink from the cold.
I offer to call back later, but he says no, his wife Anne Marie is at the gym; she’ll be back soon. If it’s all the same to me, we may as well go ahead. He turns his phone around to show me the house, where the dog is waiting by the back door, unimpressed. I couldn’t have asked for a better introduction to a writer preoccupied by the ordinary vicissitudes of life.
