All We Shall Know

Poetic, powerful and heart-rending * The Times *
A joy to read, for all that it breaks your heart * Independent *
One of the finest writers working in Ireland today … worthy of Greek drama * Guardian *
An exquisite account of womanhood, friendship, prejudice and tradition that is both intimate in scale and awesome in achievement * Irish Independent *
Work of genius … I was entranced by it. Buckled by it. – Sebastian Barry
A stunning piece of work, utterly truthful and emotionally powerful – Joseph O’Connor
So beautifully written and so full of compassion and humanity that I wanted to set fire to my laptop and never write again. – Liz Nugent * Irish Independent Books of the Year *
Donal Ryan’s new book is an enthrallingly impassioned and compassionate read, ferocious but humane. All We Shall Know acknowledges the acts of vicious self-destruction the human heart is capable of, but does not accept the irreparability of such acts. To his raw, wounded and grieving characters Donal Ryan says: If you are still breathing, you can be redeemed. – Colin Barrett
I read it with enormous pleasure. He is a remarkably imaginative and beautiful user of the language. This book is very moving and true. I love the truth in his work. – Jennifer Johnston
All We Shall Know is really very good. All that we’ve come to expect from Donal: great humanity and an uncanny sense of place but this time – and at last! – we have a man writing from a woman’s point of view in a totally convincing and non-patronising way. – Christine Dwyer Hickey

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 was nominated for the Booker Prize in 2013 for his debut novel, The Spinning Heart, and again in 2018, for his fourth novel, From A Low and Quiet Sea. The Spinning Heart was voted Irish Book of the Decade in 2016. In 2021 Donal became the first Irish writer to be awarded the Jean Monnet Prize for European Literature. His most recent novel, Heart Be at Peace, won both Novel of the Year and Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, and was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Nero Book Awards. His work has been adapted for stage and screen and translated into over twenty languages. Donal has lectured in Creative Writing at the University of Limerick since 2014 and lives in Castletroy with his wife Anne Marie and their two children.

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