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Where Are the Kings

The stunning Irish Times Number 1 bestseller from the winner of the Orwell Prize for Fiction

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Where Are the Kings

By: Donal Ryan
Narrated by: Donal Ryan
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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

 20th Century Coming of Age Family Life Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Funny Heartfelt Witty
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Critic reviews

A new Donal Ryan novel is always something to anticipate keenly and there is nothing to disappoint in the marvellous coming-of-age tale Where Are the Kings… A marvellous portrait of a bewildered , sad boy trying to understand a bizarre family with so many secrets while also making sense of the person he is becoming at the very moment of his dawning sexuality… A novel that has so much to say about how emotions fester , sibling jealousy, the weightlessness and formlessness of guilt , and the sudden healing power of "a deluge of love".
A novel bursting at the seams with love, humour and compassion.
In his story of a family wracked by loss, the prizewinning Irish author’s incisive prose and flashes of humour keep mawkish sentiment in check… this is a book marked by a frank and unusually high compassion for the uniquely trying experience of early adolescence…. It’s this kind of gentle but deep empathy that gives Where Are the Kings its radiance.
How is this tragic tale so funny? . . . Where Are the Kings has its tragedies, but they are wrapped in hope and human decency . . . this is a small book about small lives . . . written with tenderness and attention
Here is a book that will break your heart and stitch it back together again . . . Wisdom and tenderness lie at its core, a Ryan trademark, but this novel is extremely funny on the subject of teenage boys, and pitch perfect in its depiction of rural Irish life.
A timeless tale of family drama in rural Ireland . . . A gentle novel of ungentle things
Ryan elevates a story about adolescent grief and sexual awakening with prose of vivid, gleaming buoyancy. Every sentence is a treat.
All the characters are richly and idiosyncratically drawn . . . the writing […] recalls James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man . . . Ryan offers a vivid and engaging account of Jack's life in the bustling rural household
As is always the case in Ryan's novels, solidarity is the only true cement... From tragedy springs a moral: ‘Every single particle in the universe exerts a force on every single other particle. Nothing exists in isolation.' Where Are the Kings is a marvellous study of the mind in crisis.
Donal Ryan's wrenching, gorgeous story of an orphaned boy connects the tectonic emotions of adolescence to the stormy tempers of the natural world
All stars
Most relevant
The reading of the beautiful prose by the author is magical. Reader and author travel together.

Author reads magic

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Donal Ryan has the inate ability to weave a web of emotional complexity around what appears to be simple and draw you into the heartbreak and grief of this beautiful young man Jack. Its heartening to see the relationship and deep love these men express so sensitively , simply and with great wit and wisdom .
...Ryan's gift of language and storytelling is truly remarkable.

Astounding!

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I'm giving this 4 instead of 5 because it's not as good as Ryan's 'Heart' pair of books and you need a bell curve right? Not everything Colm Toibin wrote was as good as 'The Blackwater Lightship' or Pat McCabe and 'The Dead School' History will record Donal Ryan as good as those writers and one of the best Irish writers in the 21st century. Ryan really captures adolescence - the unpleasant feeling you get in your stomach that you just can't articulate and the cloudy thinking that goes with it. He's a wonderfully evocative writer and phrases like 'the Bedford' or references to rice cup matches bring you back to a time and place. It's a story about how difficult adolescence is , particularly so when grief is in the mix , with some bright spots and how crucial is is to have a strong support network as you figure out things. Looming in the background is the dark family secret. The curtain is only slowly pulled back on this at various point in the story and never explicitly revealed. Ultimately it's a story of hope and you identify for the narrator as he tries to navigate and survive everything

Poignant and entertaining

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