Donal Ryan

Take Four Books

In this episode of Take Four Books, host James Crawford interviews award-winning Irish author Donal Ryan about his latest novel, Where Are T

Key takeaways

• Donal Ryan is the recipient of the 2025 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction.
• His new novel, Where Are The Kings, focuses on a character named Jack navigating life after his mother's suicide.

Main topics

• Literary influences
• Writing craft and technique

Notable quotes

Things don't stop being beautiful because ugly things happen.

Conclusion

The episode provides a profound look at how an author integrates perso

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Speaker 2 (0:09) Welcome to the Haunted Library. Have you come in search of a tale? This podcast invites you to browse the shelves and find stories that will linger long after you've left this place. From gothic masterpieces to pulpy penny dreadfuls, join me, Colin Morgan, with new episodes twice a week. Find The Haunted Library wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 4 (0:38) Welcome to the programme where an author tells us about their new novel and reveals three other works that inspired its creation. Today, my guest in the studio is multi-award winning Irish author Donald Ryan. Remarkably, Donald has never published a novel that hasn't made it to number one on the Irish bestsellers list. He's also won Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards no less than three times. Just last year, he won the 2025 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, and he's twice been long-listed for the Booker Prize. According to another acclaimed Irish author, Sebastian Barry, who was on this very programme just last week, Donal is the king of the new wave of Irish writers. Quite appropriate, given that his latest novel is called Where Are the Kings? A story of a young boy coming of age in 1990s Ireland after the tragic loss of his mother. Donal Ryan. Welcome to Take Four Books. Thank you so much, Jimmy. Great to be here. Donald, you're here to talk about your new novel, Where Are the Kings? and the three works that influenced it. And you've picked two hugely influential novels about very difficult childhoods from the 1990s and the 2010s, Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes and Emma Donoghue's Room, and a beloved American bestseller about small town life in eastern Colorado. But before we get to those, Donald, let's start with that quote from Sebastian Barry, that you're the king of the new wave of Irish writers. Do you feel kingly? Well, it was very kind of Sebastian to say Speaker 3 (2:02) that, and it's been a great blurb ever since. But he said it about 12 years ago, so I've definitely been overtaken a few times between then and now. So not really, no. We all just struggle to get the words down, get the books out, and hope for the best, Speaker 4 (2:17) really, you know. Where Are The Kings is a book about a young boy who's just lost his mother. Just bring us into the circumstances of how the novel begins. Well, Jack's mum takes her own life very early Speaker 3 (2:30) in the book. And Jack feels responsible. He feels that he should have saved her from doing this. And the book describes the next two years of Jack's Speaker 4 (2:37) life from 12 to 14. And what about the title of this new novel? Where Are The Kings? That's taken from a play by W.B. Yeats, isn't it? And there's a famous scene where a character is so touched by grief and madness that he starts fighting the waves of the sea. Speaker 3 (2:52) Yeah, it's just seemed apt. Cullin is mad with grief and guilt and he's trying to fight back the tide because his son's body is there. He's killed his son by accident. Jack's chase at the start of this book that ends in his failure to save his mum, it seemed to have an echo in that. But actually, I hadn't considered that connection when I decided to call the novel Where Are the Kings. I just loved that play and the end of it and the idea of people shouting, Where are the kings? They're running down to the beach. And it just seemed right. And also, I had Theo and Holly, Jack's uncles in mind from the start, before I even had the story fully formed, that they would be there. And they are definitely kingly. You know, they're not regal in their bearing, but they're regal in the magnitude of the influence they have on Jack. the way they're there for him all the time and the kind of moral courage they have. Well, Speaker 4 (3:43) tell us about this boy, Jack, who's at the heart of your novel. He's 12 years old when the book begins. He's in small-town Ireland in the 1990s. And he keeps reliving the last few moments of his mother's life, doesn't he, as he pedals after her on his bicycle? Speaker 3 (4:00) Yeah, I mean, he feels a momentous weight of guilt because he feels that he should have saved her. He should have got there in time. You know, obviously he couldn't. there was nothing he could do. And the tragedy is that nobody around him has the lexicon to articulate, you know, what has happened to him. Nobody ever really says, Jack, it's okay. But they do their best to make him know it's okay. But the confrontation of grief never happens. And Jack wonders throughout the novel, like, where is it? Like, why are they not talking about it? And why can't I feel it myself? And then at some point he realizes it's just, it's so part of him. that it actually is the universe, that he inhabits this universe that is composed almost entirely of grief. And tell us what's happening in that moment. Why is he peddling after his mother? Because she's on the way to the lake to take her own life. And he has a kind of instinctive knowledge that this is what she's doing. And when he gets there, it's too late. And so, you know, I didn't stray too far from my own experience of suicide. But, you know, I transposed the events to a much earlier time. And I drew a lot on my own childish self, childhood self. And, you know, my son's personality and his friends, the way they act and their bearing and the way they talk. And the way me and my friends swaggered around when we were 12, 13, 14, fronting it out always, you know. Jack talks about that, but fronting it out and having to act tough and act hard. And Speaker 4 (5:25) it's not just his mother in a way that he's lost because his father's had a breakdown. and has been sent away for treatment. So Jack is now living with his grandparents and his aunts and uncles, including his mother's sister. Speaker 3 (5:38) Yeah, and he has very, you know, he has a kind of instinctive reaction to the presence of Rose that he can't help. And he feels terrible guilt. So the mother's sister's called Rose. Yeah, and Rose is gorgeous. And Jack, of course, Jack's buddy. Jack realizes that Rose is gorgeous. Jack's mind realizes his body, you know, that he thinks he shouldn't be doing this. So in this gulf between his mind and body, all of that shame and guilt swirls, which is, you know, which causes him terrible angst. And also, you know, he just really loves Rose in all sorts of ways. But this is a 13, 14 year old boy's mind. It's Speaker 4 (6:18) a Speaker 3 (6:18) maelstrom of hormones and urges and instincts, you know, Speaker 4 (6:22) and Speaker 2 (6:22) we all Speaker 4 (6:23) know the kind of the madness that can... that can be contained in that kind of mind. It's also important to point out to our listeners, Donald, that despite the difficult subject matter, Where Are the Kings is a novel struck through with humour. And I'm guessing that was crucial for you in writing this. Well, thanks, Jamie, for mentioning that. My sister Speaker 3 (6:42) will ring me and say, you should stop saying your books are sad. Your books are really funny. It's generally they are, you know, because, and that's only because I write Irish rural characters. We do tend to have a very humorous bent. We tend to have a very oblique take on the world and we tend to laugh in the face of all kinds of adversity and we always have. It's encoded now. It's part of who we are. And so if I write Irish rural characters, they're going to be just garrulous and gregarious and jocular. They're never going to be too serious. They won't let things get them down too much. You know, they'll start, because when you laugh at something, you're on the way to defeating it. And so these guys, Theo and Holly, to me, they're so familiar, you know. And if you ever watch two Irish men working together, whether they're on a building site or in a garage or a meat factory, it's just, it's pure, you can stand back. And it's pure comedy. If they're good friends and write the same task, it's just pure gold. It's stand-up comedy and avant-garde performance and all these things and pure theatre all at once. It's just incredible. And so Theo and Holly, you know, there's bits of that in the book. where Theo and Holly's voices just break through and