From a Low and Quiet Sea: From the Number 1 bestselling author of STRANGE FLOWERS

Description

Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2018, the powerful fourth novel from multi-award-winning author of The Spinning Heart. ***LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018*** ***SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA NOVEL AWARD 2018*** 'An engrossing, unpredictable, beautifully crafted novel' RODDY DOYLE Farouk's country has been torn apart by war. Lampy's heart has been laid waste by Chloe. John's past torments him as he nears his end. The refugee. The dreamer. The penitent. From war-torn Syria to small-town Ireland, three men, scarred by all they have loved and lost, are searching for some version of home. Each is drawn towards a powerful reckoning, one that will bring them together in the most unexpected of ways.

Donal Ryan is from Nenagh in County Tipperary. He is the award-winning author of four novels and one short story collection. A former civil servant, Donal lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick. He lives with his wife Anne Marie and their two children.

A thing of such beauty and compassion, a reminder of what the very finest sentences can do to shatter and then reassemble our hearts * Kamila Shamsie * Beautiful and affecting * David Nicholls * I struggle to think of a writer who has been so prolific and consistent in quality as Ryan . . . Brutally honest, moving and often hilarious * Guardian * An engrossing, unpredictable, beautifully crafted novel; Donal Ryan is giving us characters - their angles and their language - that we haven't seen in Irish literature before. -- RODDY DOYLE Donal Ryan has not only bounded over a wall into new territory, but built himself a castle there . . . This is a superb novel. -- JOHN BOYNE From a Low and Quiet Sea is not only very cleverly constructed, but deeply moving too. I loved it. * Louis de Bernieres * Donal Ryan writes characters so well that as a reader you think 'I've met that man', or 'I know that woman.' But as a writer you simply wonder 'how does he do it?' From a Low and Quiet Sea is brutal and beautiful, carefully crafted portraits, deep and real, tied together, fashioned by a true artist. I absolutely loved it. -- KIT DE WAAL Themes of kindness and humanity are the binding thread...and Ryan writes of them with characteristic warmth and insight. * Sunday Times * The book has stayed with me -- Jonathan Franzen * Guardian, Best Books of 2018 * It's a beautiful, luminous kind of piece - full of mystery, compassion, woven with such skill; heartbreaking and restorative. I will carry these splintered men around with me for a long time, along with the women who have loved them. -- RACHEL JOYCE From a Low and Quiet Sea is beautifully written, compassionate and almost unbearably moving. I loved it. I would struggle to think of any other Irish author working today who writes with as much compassion as Donal Ryan. -- LOUISE O'NEILL Donal Ryan writes with such sharp observation and humanity, that he makes us sit up and wonder at the tiny quiet internal lives of strangers. His writing is a wonderful gift to all of us. From a Low and Quiet Sea is another short and perfect novel to be inhaled in one heart-lurching gulp. -- LIZ NUGENT Ryan is not the first Irish writer indebted to Joyce, but his work reminds me of something Sylvia Beach said about Joyce: "He told me that he had never met a bore."...Wonderful * Irish Times * Deft and devastating...this book is both hard-hitting and uplifting: it serves as an indictment of the care industry, but also as a tribute to the way that humans care for one another. * The Observer * The denouement, which comes in breathless bursts, is devastating. From a Low and Quiet Sea leaves you with that sense of discombobulating enlightenment that so often characterises the quiet epiphanies of great short stories. * Sunday Times * A masterly portrait . . . the confidence with which Ryan dons the clothing of another culture marks a departure for his writing . . . a successor to John McGahern . . . It is exciting to see his subject matter move beyond his country's borders, with the prospect of more of this to come.' * The Spectator * Haunting ... utterly persuasive -- Joseph O'Connor * Irish Times, Books of the Year * The lives and stories, loves and tragedies, animating From a Low and Quiet Sea are wonderfully individual and finely alive. This is a brief book: yet one that lingers long in the reader's mind. * New Statesman * As moving as anything written about Syria * Mail on Sunday * It is vomit-inducing, it's so good. * Kit de Waal, Observer *