Rencontre avec Donal Ryan

Over the last decade, Donal Ryan has turned into something of an Irish literary phenomenon. His first novel, The Spinning Heart, won the Guardian First Book Award and the EU Prize for Literature as well as Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. Donal returns to the CCI - virtually - to launch the French translation of his fourth novel From a Low and Quiet Sea published by Albin Michel as Par une mer basse et tranquille.

The novel draws together the stories of three very different characters: Farouk is a doctor and Syrian refugee, escaping his homeland with his wife and daughter for what he hopes will be a brighter future in Ireland; meanwhile young Lampy lives with his mother and grandfather and is recovering from his first broken heart; finally, there is the elderly John, an accountant and money-wielding lobbyist filled with remorse. They find their lives entwined in a most suprising manner that in turn gives us, as John Boyne says, clear insights into what makes Ireland such a peculiar, complicated and contradictory country.

"This is a superb novel, from a writer building a body of work the equal of any today... filled with love and righteous anger" (The Guardian)

(Re)watch the talk hosted by the publisher Francis Geffard (Albin Michel):