A Long Long Way - Softcover

Barry, Sebastian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143035096 ISBN 13: 9780143035091

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2005

Synopsis

Praised as a "master storyteller" (The Wall Street Journal) and hailed for his "flawless use of language" (Boston Herald), Irish author and playwright Sebastian Barry has created a powerful new novel about divided loyalties and the realities of war.

Sebastian Barry's latest novel, Days Without End, is now available.

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.

About this title

Review:

"A deeply moving story of courage and fidelity."--J.M. Coetzee, Nobel Prize-winning author of Disgrace

"A modern masterpiece."--The Boston Globe

"Barry succeeds admirably in creating complex individuals who find themselves trapped in a brutal reality."--Los Angeles Times

"Wrenching...[Barry marches] bravely into the darkest, most dangerous terrain of human nature."--The Christian Science Monitor

"Nobody writers better about the trenches of the First World War than Sebastian Barry. In brutally effective prose he lays bare and celebrates the heroism of the young men whose livers were lost on the killing fields of France. His great gift is that he makes you feel he is reporting events that he's witnessed first hand."--Peter Sheridan, author of Everything Inch of Her

"This is Sebastian Barry's song of innocence and experience, composed with poetic grace and an eye, both unflinching and tender, for savage detail and moments of pure beauty. It is also an astonishing display of Barry's gift for creative a memorable character, whom he has written, indelibly, back into a history which continues to haunt us."--Colm Tóibín

"Lyrical...Willie Dunne's voice, like his dilemmas, has the resonance of authenticity."--Hew Starchan, author of The First World War

"A Long Long Way is one of those novels that, as you turn it over in your mind, may just stay with you a long, long time."--The Denver Post

From the Publisher:

Longlisted for The Man Booker Prize 2005

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0143035096
• ISBN 13: 9780143035091
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304