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Where Are the Kings

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What to expect

Tender, moving, full of warmth and crackling with humour and the love of family, the exquisite new novel from the winner of the Orwell Prize for Fiction and the Irish Book of the Year...

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?

‘Beautiful, hilarious and completely gripping’ RACHEL JOYCE

'No one gets inside the heart like Donal Ryan' KIT DE WAAL

‘Donal Ryan conjures up characters so solid, so complete and authentic, it immediately feels as though you have known them for your entire life’ JOANNA CANNON

© Donal Ryan 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

Critics Review

Beautiful, hilarious and completely gripping… I fell in love with the whole family, the sheer goodness of them, the way Donal Ryan gets inside Jack’s heart and head and explores the gap between them, what he knows and feels… a story filled with love that shines a light on all the hidden places. My life is better because of it.
Rachel Joyce, author of The Homemade God
Where are the Kings is a brilliant, quietly devastating exploration of the fledgling heart. Tender, funny, mysterious and hopeful, it’s a flawless gem about the imperfect yet profound ways in which families love, and what that love costs.
M L Stedman, Sunday Times bestselling author of A Far-flung Life and The Light Between Oceans
No one gets inside the heart like Donal Ryan. A book about belonging and coming home, about letting go and finding family. I loved it from the first word to the last.
KIt de Waal
I have been a fan of Donal's writing for the longest time and the wonderful THE QUEEN OF DIRT ISLAND was one of the first novels I reviewed for The Guardian. This novel though... oh my heart. To explore grief through the eyes of a child, and to do it so exquisitely and so elegantly, is just mind-blowing. The thing I LOVE about Donal Ryan's writing is that he uncovers the poetry that hides within ordinary life. He also conjures up characters so solid, so complete and authentic, it immediately feels as though you have known them for your entire life.
Joanna Cannon, author of The Trouble with Goats and Sheep
The arrival of a new Donal Ryan novel always feels like Christmas morning and Where are the Kings does not disappoint. It's a powerful meditation on boyhood, family and trauma, expertly couched in Ryan's devastating prose. Warm, irreverent and desperately humane this is a novel which manages to be timeless, current and prescient.
Jan Carson, author of Few & Far Between
You know when a book is so arresting, so captivating, that you have to actively seek a long time just to think about it – to luxuriate in the characters in all their charm and humour and sadness and confusion, a book that makes you look at the world differently, while at the same time cranking open your heart and letting the whole world pour in…We are the Kings. This is that book.
Annie Mac
Author Donal Ryan
Narrator Donal Ryan
Duration 5 hours and 41 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781529975512
Format Audiobook
Publisher Transworld
Genre Family life fiction, Historical fiction, Modern and contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: Coming of age
Availability AU, GB, IE

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