New Releases by Sebastian Barry

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE Named a Best Book of 2023 by the New Yorker, Washington Post, NPR, and Kirkus Reviews “You should be reading Sebastian Barry. [He] has a special understanding of the human heart.” —The Atlantic “A prose stylist of near-miraculous skill. . . Barry reaches deep into the messenger bag of mystery fiction and turns the whole business inside out . . . marvelous.” —The Washington Post “An unforgettable novel from one of our finest writers.” —Douglas Stuart, author of Shuggie Bain From the five-time Booker Prize nominee and 2018-2021 Laureate for Irish Fiction, a virtuosic, profound novel exploring love, memory, grief, and long-buried secrets 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 which Tom never quite came to terms with, he finds himself pulled into the darkest currents of his past. A beautiful, haunting novel in which nothing is quite as it seems, Old God''s Time is about what we live through, what we live with, and what may survive of us.

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.

“A brave and moving novel [that] has a tender empathy with the natural world.” —Hermione Lee, The New York Review of Books From the two-time Booker Prize finalist author of Days Without End comes a dazzling companion novel about memory and identity, set in Tennessee in the aftermath of the Civil War 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 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 which Winona struggles to confront, let alone understand. Exquisitely written, A Thousand Moons is a stirring, poignant story of love and redemption, of one woman''s journey and her determination to write her own future.

Now we''ve lived together in contentment, more or less, for nigh on twenty year. Like turtle doves. - In prison, I mean, for fuck''s sake, the chances of that.PJ and Christy: sworn enemies destined to share one small room for twenty years. As the two men recall the joys and torments of life outside - the childhood excursions, a deadly brawl, past loves and summer dresses - slowly they uncover the tragic events that have lead them to their cell in Montjoy. A play that explores our capacity to commit the deadliest of crimes but also our capacity for survival, reconciliation and love, ON BLUEBERRY HILL by Sebastian Barry (twice winner of the Costa Book of the Year) premiered in a Fishamble production at the Pavilion Theatre as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival and at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris in October 2017.

A stunning new novel from the two-time Man Booker shortlisted author of The Secret Scripture. Sebastian Barry''s latest novel, A Thousand Moons, is now available. Irishman Jack McNulty is a “temporary gentleman”—an Irishman whose commission in the British army in World War II 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 the extraordinary events that he has seen. A lifetime of war and world travel—as a soldier in World War II, 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.

OLD GOD''S TIME (MARCH 2023), SEBASTIAN BARRY''S STUNNING NEW NOVEL, AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER NOWWhistling PsycheA dark night, an old waiting room and two supposed strangers eager to reach their destinations. In the cold hours that rest between nightfall and daybreak, silent questions prompt unexpected revelations. Two souls share a passion for reform, but only one - Miss Nightingale - has been honoured. The other, Dr Barry, would never receive the same acclaim, but notoriety came after death and for a very different reason . . .Whistling Psyche premièred at the Almeida Theatre, London in May 2004.Fred and Jane explores the deep and sustaining friendship between two nuns, Anna and Beatrice, as they recall the trials and joys of religious life.''This is Barry at his best: evocative, gentle, suffused with the beauty of the simple and the joy of turning the strange into the familiar.'' Sunday Tribune''A rare delight. A clear-running joy.'' Sunday Independent''A triumph in its own right.'' RTEFred and Jane premièred at Bewley''s Cafe Theatre, Dublin in 2002.

OLD GOD''S TIME (MARCH 2023), SEBASTIAN BARRY''S STUNNING NEW NOVEL, AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER NOWSee, love between a man and a woman, it''s - private. It happens where you never do see it. In rooms.Italy 1 - Ireland 0...The score that marked Ireland''s demoralizing exit from Italia ''90 took its toll. No more so than for Janet and Joe Brady of Parnell Street who lost far more than the match that night. Some years on, Joe and Janet reveal the intimacies of their love and the rupture of their marriage, through interconnecting monologues that also evoke their life-long love affair with Dublin city itself. Sebastian Barry''s explores with vivid tenderness the devastating effects of public and private acts of violence. This is an intimate, heroic tale of ordinary and extraordinary life on the streets of Dublin. Fishamble''s world premiere of The Pride of Parnell Street opened at the Tricycle Theatre, London, and as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival at the Tivoli Theatre, Dublin, in September 2007.

Celebrated children''s writer Hans Christian Andersen arrives, unannounced, for a stay at Gad''s Hill Place in the Kent marshes - home to Charles Dickens and his large, charismatic family. To the lonely and eccentric guest, the members of Dickens'' household seem to live a life of unreachable bliss. But with his broken English, Andersen doesn''t at first see the storms brewing within the family: undeclared passions, a son about to go to India, and a growing strangeness at the heart of Dickens'' marriage. Andersen''s English by Sebastian Barry premiered at the Theatre Royal, Bury, in February 2010 in a production by Out of Joint.

From his grave in the precincts of Canterbury Cathedral, Dallas Sweetman is called to give account. He tells a story of love and death, jealousy and miraculous happenings, of the divided loyalties of Protestants and Catholics in the Elizabethan Age. Before us, his judges, Dallas seeks to justify the actions of his life. But is he telling the truth? And can he be forgiven? The lost tradition of staging new plays at Canterbury Cathedral, most famously T. S. Eliot''s Murder in the Cathedral, was revived with the premiere of Sebastian Barry''s Dallas Sweetman in September 2008.

Jack McNulty is a temporary gentleman, an Irishman whose commission in the British army in the Second World War was never permanent. In 1957, sitting in his lodgings in Accra, he urgently sets out to write his story. He feels he cannot take one step further, or even hardly a breath, without looking back at all that has befallen him. He is an ordinary man, both petty and heroic, but he has seen extraordinary things. He has worked and wandered around the world - as a soldier, an engineer, a UN observer - trying to follow his childhood ambition to better himself.

A dark night, an old waiting room and two supposed strangers eager to reach their destinations. In the cold hours that rest between nightfall and daybreak, silent questions prompt unexpected revelations. Two souls share a passion for reform, but only one - Miss Nightingale - has been honoured. The other, Dr Barry, would never receive the same acclaim, but notoriety came after death and for a very different reason ... 'Whistling Psyche' premiered at the Almeida Theatre, London in May 2004.

Longlisted for the Booker Prize, a mesmerizing new novel from the award-winning author of Old God''s Time A first-person narrative of Lilly Bere’s life, On Canaan’s Side opens as the eighty-five-year-old Irish émigré mourns the loss of her grandson, Bill. Lilly, the daughter of a Dublin policeman, revisits her eventful past, going back to the moment she was forced to flee Ireland at the end of the First World War. She continues her tale in America, where—far from her family—she first tastes the sweetness of love and the bitterness of betrayal. Spanning nearly seven decades, Sebastian Barry’s extraordinary fifth novel explores memory, war, family ties, love, and loss, distilling the complexity and beauty of life into his haunting prose.

Here, now, listen, I''ll tell you a tale . . . Daffodils are in bloom as dawn breaks over the foothills of Ballycumber, ushering in hope for a new day and stirring the ghosts of a past fraught with sorrow, anguish and emptiness. In search of advice, young Evans Stafford calls at the home of friend and strong-minded traditionalist, Nicholas Farquhar. The following day, as Farquhar learns the devastating consequences of this meeting, he discovers that his memories and words are governed by a buried history; a force far greater than himself. Sebastian Barry''s Tales of Ballycumber premiered at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in September 2009.

Recording the events of her life from a mental hospital as her hundredth birthday approaches, Roseanne McNulty considers returning to society when she learns that the hospital is about to close, but her situation is complicated by the possibility that Roseanne remembers her life quite differently from what is documented in her patient records. 15,000 first printing.

Willie Dunne est le fils d''un policier dublinois. Un garçon sensible, doué, doté d''une voix d''exception. Pas assez grand pour marcher sur les traces de son père comme policier, il s''engage comme volontaire pour combattre dans les tranchées, malgré l''amour infini qui le lie à une jeune fille avec laquelle il désire plus que tout se marier. De la bataille de la Somme jusqu''à la fin de la guerre, ou presque, il assiste à d''horribles combats. La guerre, dès lors, le façonne. Mais elle lui réserve également une surprise.

A powerful new novel about divided loyalties and the realities of war from “master storyteller” (Wall Street Journal) Sebastian Barry, author of Old God''s Time In 1914, Willie Dunne, barely eighteen years old, leaves behind Dublin, his family, and the girl he plans to marry in order to enlist in the Allied forces and face the Germans on the Western Front. Once there, he encounters a horror of violence and gore he could not have imagined and sustains his spirit with only the words on the pages from home and the camaraderie of the mud-covered Irish boys who fight and die by his side. Dimly aware of the political tensions that have grown in Ireland in his absence, Willie returns on leave to find a world split and ravaged by forces closer to home. Despite the comfort he finds with his family, he knows he must rejoin his regiment and fight until the end. With grace and power, Sebastian Barry vividly renders Willie’s personal struggle as well as the overwhelming consequences of war.

The latest dramatic offering from one of Ireland's master playwrights Johnny Silvester should be enjoying his retirement in his opulent home outside Dublin, but the past is catching up with him. Once lionized for ushering the Irish Republic into the modern world, Silvester has fallen out of favor not only with the public, but also with his family and friends. Rapidly aging and fed up with a barrage of criticism, he retreats to his study where he reassures himself of his inculpability and awaits a call from his doctor--a call he expects will bring news of a fatal affliction. As he hovers near the phone his family, friends, colleagues, journalists, and students come forth with their reproaches. Among these visitors is the Morleyesque ghost of Cornelius, an ex-colleague and one-time friend for whose mental breakdown and death Silvester is responsible. With Hinterland Sebastian Barry examines the personal and public risks involved in making political advances on a national scale. Weaving modern history in with the life story of a man and his family, Barry has created another searching drama of the uneasy balance between heroism and roguery in Irish politics. The latest dramatic offering from one of Ireland's master playwrights Johnny Silvester should be enjoying his retirement in his opulent home outside Dublin, but the past is catching up with him. Once lionized for ushering the Irish Republic into the modern world, Silvester has fallen out of favor not only with the public, but also with his family and friends. Rapidly aging and fed up with a barrage of criticism, he retreats to his study where he reassures himself of his inculpability and awaits a call from his doctor--a call he expects will bring news of a fatal affliction. As he hovers near the phone his family, friends, colleagues, journalists, and students come forth with their reproaches. Among these visitors is the Morleyesque ghost of Cornelius, an ex-colleague and one-time friend for whose mental breakdown and death Silvester is responsible. With Hinterland Sebastian Barry examines the personal and public risks involved in making political advances on a national scale. Weaving modern history in with the life story of a man and his family, Barry has created another searching drama of the uneasy balance between heroism and roguery in Irish politics.

Hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as "the finest book to come out of Europe this year," The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty is acclaimed Irish playwright Sebastian Barry''s lyrical tale of a fugitive everyman. Sebastian Barry''s latest novel, Days Without End, is now available. For Eneas McNulty, a happy, innocent childhood in County Sligo in the early 1900s gives way to an Ireland wracked by violence and conflict. Unable to find work in the depressed times after World War I, Eneas joins the British-led police force, the Royal Irish Constabulary—a decision that alters the course of his life. Branded a traitor by Irish nationalists and pursued by IRA hitmen, Eneas is forced to flee his homeland, his family, and Viv, the woman he loves. His wandering terminates on the Isle of Dogs, a haven for sailors, where a lifetime of loss is redeemed by a final act of generosity. The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty is the story of a lost man and a compelling saga that illuminates Ireland''s complex history.

THE STORY: From her hospital bed in 1950''s Dublin, Mai O''Hara recalls her life through morphine-induced memories and hallucinations. Dying of liver cancer caused by alcoholism, Mai reminisces on her youthful promise as a member of the Galway bourge

THE STORY: The fifth play in a cycle of plays about the author''s Irish family, THE STEWARD OF CHRISTENDOM is a freely imagined portrait of the author''s great-grandfather, Thomas Dunne, the last Chief Superintendent of the Dublin Metropolitan Police

''The Steward of Cristendom'', one of the plays in this collection, was awarded the Writers'' Guild Award for Best Fringe Play of 1995. Barry has been credited with bringing poetic drama back to the Irish stage, and has been compared with Synge and O''Casey.