Irish novelist Donal Ryan has won the Guardian’s First Book Award for his debut novel The Spinning Heart. The award recognises the work of the finest new authors who have published their first book in English in the last year, and includes works of fiction and non-fiction. The novelist scooped up £10,000 in winnings, plus an advertising package in the Guardian and The Observer. Ryan’s novel takes the view of 21 people struggling to get by in Ireland after the financial collapse. "Slim in size, ambitious in structure and devastating in its emotional force, The Spinning Heart is a bravura performance” said Lisa Allardice, editor of Guardian Review and chair of the Guardian First Book Award judging panel. “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." Paul Mason, novelist and member of the judging panel, said: "When someone pops up and says, I'm going to tell the entire story of how a country was ripped off, and its illusions shattered, in the voices of twenty-odd nobodies from a rural town, and here's the demotic language, and here's the poetry and bitterness of working class life - and then delivers, in their first novel, you've just got to stand back and applaud. There were two or three strong contenders but what stood out for me was Ryan's audacity." Donal Ryan’s “The Spinning Heart” was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize this year and also won the Irish Book Awards book of the year in 2012.