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Sebastian Barry

Biography

Sebastian Barry

Sebastian Barry was born in Dublin in 1955. His plays include "Boss Grady’s Boys" (1988), "The Steward of Christendom" (1995), "Our Lady of Sligo" (1998), "The Pride of Parnell Street" (2007) and "Dallas Sweetman" (2008). His novels include THE WHEREABOUTS OF ENEAS McNULTY (1998), ANNIE DUNNE (2002), A LONG LONG WAY (2005), which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, THE SECRET SCRIPTURE (2008), which was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, ON CANAAN'S SIDE (2011) and THE TEMPORARY GENTLEMAN (2014). His poetry includes "The Water-Colourist" (1982), "Fanny Hawke Goes to the Mainland Forever" (1989) and "The Pinkening Boy" (2005). His awards include the Irish-America Fund Literary Award, The Christopher Ewart-Biggs Prize, the London Critics Circle Award, The Kerry Group Irish Fiction Prize, and Costa Awards for Best Novel and Book of the Year. He lives in Wicklow with his family.

Sebastian Barry

Books by Sebastian Barry

by Sebastian Barry - Fiction

Recently retired policeman Tom Kettle is settling into the quiet of his new home, a lean-to annexed to a Victorian castle overlooking the Irish Sea. For months he has barely seen a soul, catching only glimpses of his eccentric landlord and a nervous young mother who has moved in next door. Occasionally, fond memories return of his family --- his beloved wife, June, and their two children, Winnie and Joe. But when two former colleagues turn up at his door with questions about a decades-old case, one that Tom never quite came to terms with, he finds himself pulled into the darkest currents of his past.

by Sebastian Barry - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Winona Cole, an orphaned child of the Lakota Indians, finds herself growing up in an unconventional household on a farm in west Tennessee. Raised by her adoptive parents, John Cole and Thomas McNulty, whose story Sebastian Barry told in his acclaimed previous novel, DAYS WITHOUT END, she forges a life for herself beyond the violence and dispossession of her past. Tennessee is a state still riven by the bitter legacy of the Civil War, and the fragile harmony of her family is soon threatened by a further traumatic event --- one that Winona struggles to confront, let alone understand.

by Sebastian Barry - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Thomas McNulty, aged barely 17 and having fled the Great Famine in Ireland, signs up for the U.S. Army in the 1850s. With his brother in arms, John Cole, Thomas goes on to fight in the Indian Wars --- against the Sioux and the Yurok --- and, ultimately, the Civil War. Orphans of terrible hardships themselves, the men find these days to be vivid and alive, despite the horrors they see and are complicit in.

by Sebastian Barry - Fiction

Told in the first person, as a narrative of Lilly Bere's life over 17 days, ON CANAAN'S SIDE opens as she mourns the loss of her grandson. 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.