Sebastian Barry Books

Originally produced by Fishamble, the New Play Company.

In Elsewhere Belemus Duck, aged thirteen, a boy of normal appearance, describes a series of unexpected adventures he had when he was still twelve years old. He doesn't quite know how or why they they happened to him, but he is very glad they did, and sets them out here so other people can have a go at them. His excursions into the places of Elsewhere show him mystery, trickery, oddness, a bit of old-fashioned cavalry charging, and a good measure of peril and danger. On the way he meets a pleasant skull, a sad king, the atrocious Mister Creek, the strangely admirable Top Harry, and other characters, desirable and undesirable. Belemus weathers his adventures and reaches thirteen, only to find he misses them very much indeed. But here they are now for the reader as he or she wishes to try them.

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;

'As they used to say in Ireland, the devil only comes into good things.'Narrated by Lilly Bere, On Canaan's Side opens as she mourns the loss of her grandson, Bill. The story then goes back to the moment she was forced to flee Dublin, at the end of the First World War, and follows her life through into the new world of America, a world filled with both hope and danger. At once epic and intimate, Lilly's narrative 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, it is a novel of memory, war, family-ties and love, which once again displays Sebastian Barry's exquisite prose and gift for storytelling.

One of the most vivid and realised characters of recent fiction, Willie Dunne is the innocent hero of Sebastian Barry's highly acclaimed novel. Leaving Dublin to fight for the Allied cause as a member of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, he finds himself caught between the war playing out on foreign fields and that festering at home, waiting to erupt with the Easter Rising. Profoundly moving, intimate and epic, A Long Long Way charts and evokes a terrible coming of age, one too often written out of history.

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.

The play that established Barry as one of Ireland's most powerful contemporary playwrightsThomas Dunne, ex-chief superintendent of the Dublin Metropolitan police looks back on his career built during the latter years of Queen Victoria's empire, from his home in Baltinglass in Dublin in 1932. Like King Lear, Dunne tries valiantly to break free of history and himself. The Steward of Christendom took London by storm when it premiered at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in March 1995 with Donal McCann in the title role. It transferred to Broadway and has toured around the world."Sebastian Barry's beautiful and devastating memory play...will stay with us for many years." (New York Times)

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;

Following the end of the First World War, Eneas McNulty joins the British-led Royal Irish Constabulary. Tender, witty, troubling and tragic, The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty tells the secret history of a lost man.

There were no saints in any era, Tom knew, just good men and bad, and sometimes both in the one bottle. Retired policeman Tom Kettle is enjoying the quiet of his new home, a lean to annexed to a white Victorian Castle in Dalkey overlooking the sea.