Author to watch - Donal Ryan wins Guardian First Book Prize

The Spinning Heart, the debut novel by Donal Ryan, has won the Guardian First Book Award, in association with Waterstones.

Ryan’s book, published by Doubleday Ireland, is set in the aftermath of the financial collapse and tells the story from the points of view of 21 people struggling to get by in a rural village in contemporary south-west Ireland.

The Guardian First Book Award recognises new authors who have had their first book published in English in the last year, whether fiction or non-fiction. Ryan receives a £10,000 prize plus an advertising package in the Guardian and The Observer.

Guardian Review editor and chair of the judging panel Lisa Allardice said: 'Slim in size, ambitious in structure and devastating in its emotional force, The Spinning Heart is a bravura performance. Donal Ryan gives voice to those who are more used to silence and to feelings that are often unexpressed: the 21 internal monologues come together as a great cry of pain from a community in crisis. It was a tough decision, as always, but here is a new novelist whom we all felt we would be hearing more from in the future.'

Also shortlisted were:
Kiss Me First by Lottie Moggach (Picador)
Burial Rites by Hannah Kent (Picador/Pan Macmillan)
We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo (Chatto)
Sex and the Citadel by Shereen El Feki (Chatto & Windus)

The shortlist was selected in collaboration with UK wide reading groups, run in partnership with Waterstones. The reading groups selected their favourite books from the longlist and these suggestions assisted the judging panel in selecting the final shortlist.

More, including a charmingly self-effacing description of the book from Donal, at the Guardian.