The next book to be featured this season on the Sara Cox Radio 2 Book Club is Where Are the Kings by Donal Ryan—an unforgettable, intensely moving and uplifting novel about a young boy coming of age.
The book was released on 13 August and Donal’s interview with Sara is on BBC Sounds from Tuesday 22 September.
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Where Are the Kings
Something terrible has happened to Jack but no one seems to want to talk about it.
His uncles can tell him about everything from quantum physics to how to hunt for deer, but they can’t seem to tell him anything about their own sister or why Jack doesn’t feel sad for her in the way he should, or why Grandad tries to shoot Jack’s dad when he gets out of the hospital.
Still, there’s work to be done in the oily wonderland of his uncles’ garage; there’s his beautiful aunt Rose to hypnotise him and his loving grandparents to console him; then there’s JJ, who wants to fight him one day and save him the next.
But with so many questions, in a family with so many secrets, it is difficult for Jack to understand the person he is becoming. How can a simple boy learn to become a king?
About the author
Donal Ryan, from Nenagh, County Tipperary, has published seven number one bestselling novels and a short story collection. He has won several awards for his fiction, including the European Union Prize for Literature, the Guardian First Book Award and six Irish Book Awards, and has been shortlisted for several more, including the Costa Book Award and the Dublin International Literary Award. He has been nominated for the Booker Prize twice. His most recent novel, Heart Be at Peace, won the Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, the Orwell Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Nero
Book Awards. His work has been adapted for stage and screen. He teaches Creative Writing at the University of Limerick.
Get involved
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