2007

A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry

DUBLIN: ONE CITY, ONE BOOK
APRIL 2007

About the Author:

Sebastian Barry, born in Dublin in 1955, is a playwright, poet and novelist. His play, The Steward of Christendom, first produced in 1995, won numerous awards and has been performed around the world.

He is the author of three acclaimed novels, The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty, Annie Dunne and A Long Long Way, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2005. He Lives in County Wicklow with his family.

Praise:

‘A song of innocence and experience composed with a poetic grace and an eye for savage detail and moments of pure beauty’ Colm Tóibín

‘One of the great books about the First World War’ Irish Times

‘The story grips, shocks and saddens; but most importantly refuses to be forgotten’ The Times

‘Unsurpassed in first world war fiction, a small masterpiece’ Independent

‘A deeply moving story of courage and fidelity’ J.M. Coetzee

About The Book:

Shortlisted for The Man Booker Prize in 2005 A Long Long Way was hailed in the Sunday Tribune as ‘One of the most moving fictional accounts of war that surely must rank alongside those real-life testimonies of Owen and Sassoon’.

In it, Barry brings to life the divided loyalties that many Irish soldiers felt during the First World War and maps one man’s transition as the war separates him from everything he knows and loves.

Synopsis:

Willie Dunne is barely eighteen-years-old when he leaves Dublin to fight for the Allied cause as a member of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. He soon finds himself caught between the war on foreign fields and the political and religious tensions at home which erupt in the Easter Rising.

A Long Long Way brilliantly evokes the camaraderie of Willie’s regiment as well as the cruelty and sadness of war and the effect that the Easter Rising has on the Irish soldiers who are fighting for the King of England on foreign fields – the doubts and divisions it caused them. It also charts Willie’s coming-of-age, his leaving behind his sweetheart, and his fractious relationship with his father, a fervent loyalist.

Tender and moving, A Long Long Way is the story of an ordinary man who finds himself in extraordinary circumstances struggling to come to terms with the events that rage around him.

Dublin: One City, One Book is a project designed to encourage everyone in the city to read the same book over the same period. The project promotes reading in a city which boasts one of the world’s greatest literary heritages including four Nobel Laureates.