From A Long Long Way, his Booker shortlisted novel about the Irish soldiers who fought for Britain during the First World War to his Donal McCann starring hit-play, The Steward of Christendom; from his first Costa Book of the Year novel The Secret Scripture to his second, Days Without End, a decade later, Sebastian Barry's writing career has been as long and varied as it has extraordinary. Intimate, revealing and generous of heart, these three lectures - written and delivered as part of his three year tenure as the Laureate for Irish fiction - reflect on his life and career so far, some of the formative moments and people he's met along the way, and the ongoing importance of creativity.
Even when you come out of bloodshed and disaster in the end you have got to learn to live.
From the Costa Book of the Year-winning author of Days Without End
Winona is a young Lakota orphan adopted by former soldiers Thomas McNulty and John Cole. Living with Thomas and John on the farm they work in 1870s Tennessee, she is educated and loved, forging a life for herself beyond the violence and dispossession of her past. But the fragile harmony of her unlikely family unit, in the aftermath of the Civil War, is soon threatened by a further traumatic event, one which Winona struggles to confront, let alone understand. Told in Sebastian Barry's rare and masterly prose, A Thousand Moons is a powerful, moving study of one woman's journey, of her determination to write her own future, and of the enduring human capacity for love.
"Nobody writes like, nobody takes lyrical risks like, nobody pushes the language, and the heart, and the two together, quite like Sebastian Barry does." ALI SMITH
PRAISE FOR DAYS WITHOUT END:
"An amazing achievement." DAVID NICHOLLS
"A violent, superbly lyrical Western offering a sweeping vision of American in the making." KAZUO ISHIGURO
Annie Dunne and her cousin Sarah live and work on a small farm in a remote and beautiful part of Wicklow in late 1950s Ireland. All about them, a way of life is about to disappear. Like two old rooks, they hold to their life, cherishing everything. When Annie's nephew and his wife are set to go to London, their two small children are brought down to spend the summer with them. A summer of adventure, pain, delight and ultimately epiphany unfolds for both the children and their elderly caretakers.
Following the end of the First World War, Eneas McNulty joins the British-led Royal Irish Constabulary. With all those around him becoming soldiers of a different kind, however, it proves to be the defining decision of his life when, having witnessed the murder of a fellow RIC policeman, he is wrongly accused of identifying the executioners. With a sentence of death passed over him he is forced to flee Sligo, leaving behind his friends, family and beloved girl, Viv.
From Sebastian Barry, a two-time finalist for the Man Booker Prize, comes a powerful and unforgettable novel chronicling a young Irish immigrant's army years in the Indian wars and the American Civil War.
Thomas McNulty, having fled the Great Famine in Ireland and now barely seventeen years old, signs up for the US Army in the 1850s and with his brother in arms, John Cole, goes to fight in the Indian Wars-against the Sioux and the Yurok-and, ultimately, in the Civil War. Orphans of terrible hardships themselves, they find these days to be vivid and alive, despite the horrors they see and are complicit in.
Moving from the plains of Wyoming to Tennessee, Sebastian Barry's latest work is a masterpiece of atmosphere and language. An intensely poignant story of two men and the makeshift family they create with a young Sioux girl, Winona, Days without End is a fresh and haunting portrait of the most fateful years in American history and is a novel never to be forgotten.
Having signed up for the US army in the 1850s, aged barely seventeen, Thomas McNulty and his brother-in-arms, John Cole, go on to fight in the Indian wars and ultimately, the Civil War. Orphans of terrible hardships themselves, despite the horrors they both see and are complicit in they find these days to be vivid. Both an intensely poignant story of two men and the lives they are dealt, and a fresh look at some of the most fateful years in America's past.
A stunning new novel from the Man Booker shortlisted author of The Secret Scripture
In this highly anticipated new novel, Irishman Jack McNulty is a “temporary gentleman”—an Irishman whose commission in the British army in WWII was never permanent. Sitting in his lodgings in Accra, Ghana, in 1957, he’s writing the story of his life with desperate urgency. He cannot take one step further without examining all of the extraordinary events that he has seen. A lifetime of war and world travel—as a soldier in WWII, an engineer, a UN observer—has brought him to this point. But the memory that weighs heaviest on his heart is that of the beautiful Mai Kirwan and their tempestuous, heartbreaking marriage. Mai was once the great beauty of Sligo, a magnetic yet unstable woman who, after sharing a life with Jack, gradually slipped from his grasp.
Award-winning author Sebastian Barry’s The Temporary Gentleman is the sixth book in his cycle of separate yet interconnected novels that brilliantly reimagine characters from Barry’s own family.
Jack McNulty is a 'temporary gentleman', an Irishman whose commission in the British army in the Second World War was never made permanent. In 1957, in his lodgings in Accra, he sets out to write his story. He is an ordinary man, both petty and heroic, but he has seen extraordinary things. He has wandered the world - as a soldier, an engineer, a UN observer - following his childhood ambition to better himself. The Temporary Gentleman is a heart-breaking portrait of one man's life - and his last bid for freedom, from the savage realities of the past and from himself.
From the two-time Man Booker short-listed author of The Secret Scripture comes a magnificent new novel that is the story of the twentieth century in America.
Told in the first person, as a narrative of Lilly Bere's life over seventeen days, On Canaan's Side opens as Lilly mourns the loss of her grandson, Bill. Lilly revisits her past, going back to the moment she was forced to flee Ireland at the end of the First World War, and continues her tale in America, a world filled with both hope and danger.
At once epic and intimate, Lilly's story unfolds as she tries to make sense of the sorrows and troubles of her life and of the people whose lives she has touched. Spanning nearly seven decades, from the Great Depression to World War II and the Vietnam War, it is the heartbreaking story of a woman whose capability to love is enormous and whose compassion, even for those who have wronged her, is astonishing.
'On Canaan's Side is written with vast sympathy and tenderness. Sebastian Barry's handling of voice and cadence is masterly. His fictional universe is filled with life, quiet truth, and exquisite intimacy; it is also fully alert to the power and irony of history. In evoking Lilly Bere, he has created a most memorable character.''Colm T'ib'n, author of the Costa Novel Award'winning Brooklyn
At once epic and intimate, the story of Lilly Bere unfurls as she tries to make sense of the sorrows and troubles of her life and of the people whose lives she has touched. Spanning nearly seven decades, from the moment Lilly fled Dublin at the end of the First World War to the new world of America, it is a novel of memory, war, family-ties and love.
Roseanne McNulty, once one of the most beautiful and beguiling girls in County Sligo, Ireland, is now an elderly patient at Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital. As her hundredth year draws near, she decides to record the events of her life, hiding the manuscript beneath the floorboards. Meanwhile, the hospital is preparing to close and is evaluating its patients to determine whether they can return to society. Dr. Grene, Roseanne's caretaker, takes a special interest in her case. In his research, he discovers a document written by a local priest that tells a very different story of Roseanne's life than what she recalls. As doctor and patient attempt to understand each other, they begin to uncover long-buried secrets about themselves. Set against an Ireland besieged by conflict, The Secret Scripture is an epic story of love, betrayal, and unavoidable tragedy.
