BÉAL NA PÉISTE was awarded the first prize in the novel category at the Oireachtas na Gaeilge Literary Awards in 2022

When Réamainn Prút lands in Belfast in 1988, he is returning to his home town as a stranger. He takes notice of the big advertisements for the secret phone number for the police, a service to share information about terrorists and lift a burden from your conscience. But Réamainn is thinking of his youth and of the old rhyme that the roadside preachers used to recite:

Come listen to my tale of Jonah and the whale; Way down in the middle of the ocean!
He remembers too the fateful night in December 1942. The night he jumped out of a German plane on the coast of County Down, he made his way to his parents’ house in the dead of night. They asked what he was doing in Germany and what would he do now that the authorities are looking for him. When Réamann Prút jumped from that plane in 1942, a rocky road lay before him, from where everything would be questioned: memory, loyalty, right and wrong – a perilous path straddling Ireland and Europe, and reaching a bloody climax in 1988.

Fionntán de Brún was born and raised in Belfast. His collection of short stories, Litir ó mo Mháthair Altrama agus Scéalta Eile (Móinín 2005), duais Bhord na Leabhar Gaeilge at the Oireachtas in 2004. Béal na Péiste is his first novel and it was awarded the first prize at the Oireachtas na Gaeilge Literary Awards in 2022.