Irish writer Donal Ryan wins prestigious Orwell Prize for Political Fiction

RTÉ News​

25-06-2025

Irish writer Donal Ryan has been announced as the winner of the prestigious Orwell Prize for Political Fiction for his novel 'Heart, Be At Peace' this evening in London.
The novel, which is set a decade after his acclaimed debut novel, 'The Spinning Heart', centres on the story of a small-knit town told through the voices of 21 different characters.
The 2025 judging panel for the prize for fiction was chaired by author Jim Crace and he said that Mr Ryan's book was chosen as the winner "for its clarity" and "for its twenty one perfectly pitched voices".
"Here is a small deprived community in rural Ireland - suffering and recovering from the bruises of its political and economic past," Mr Crace said.
He described the novel as "exceptional".
Mr Ryan, from Co Tipperary, joins a distinguished list of former Irish writers on the winning list, including Anna Burns and Claire Keegan.
Ukranian author Victoria Amelina is posthumous winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Writing for her book 'Looking at women, looking at war'.
She died in July 2023 in the Ukraine war and her unfinished work documents the resistance efforts of Ukrainian people and was described by the judges as "a testimony and a precious, powerful work of literature, a steady beam of light born amid darkness and violence".
There is a prize of £3,000 (€3,517) for each of the winners.
Every year, the Orwell Foundation awards prizes for the work which comes closes to George Orwell's own ambition to "make political writing into an art".