{"id":75727,"date":"2017-08-30T11:06:03","date_gmt":"2017-08-30T00:06:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/?p=75727"},"modified":"2017-09-13T11:41:44","modified_gmt":"2017-09-13T00:41:44","slug":"sebastianbarry_dayswithoutend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2017\/08\/30\/sebastianbarry_dayswithoutend\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Lie, steal and listen at doors’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Days<\/a>
\n2017 Man Booker longlistee<\/a> Sebastian Barry returns with a sensational new novel set in mid-19th Century America, an intensely poignant story of two men and the lives they are dealt. The judges have called Days Without End <\/em><\/a>\u201ca tour de force of narrative voice\u201d, and thought it to be \u201cpitch perfect, sentence by sentence\u201d. It was also admired for its \u201challucinatory descriptions of warfare\u201d and \u201cpowerful evocations of landscape\u201d.<\/p>\n

This would be the fourth time Barry is longlisted for the prestigious Man Booker award. In 2016, Days Without End<\/em> won the Costa Book of the Year Award. He has previously also won the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Prize, the Irish Book Awards Best Novel, the Independent Booksellers Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He now answers Booktopia’s Six Sharp Questions.<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Congratulations, you have a new book. What is it about and what does it mean to you?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s about genocide, nation building, war, armies, slaughter, necessity, exigency, hunger, and love. It was published ten months ago and its reception has been restoring, life-affirming and unexpected.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Time passes. Things change. What are the best moments that you have experienced in the past year or so?<\/strong><\/p>\n

My daughter getting her dream job as MMA and Boxing reporter for Metro Online in London. Then the six months my wife and I spent in London pretending we hadn’t followed her there. The night of the Costa Awards and then the Walter Scott Prize. Very exciting. The unexpected phonecall received along a back road in Wicklow from my editor to say we were on the Booker Longlist for the fourth time. Joyful.<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Do you have a favourite quote or passage you would be happy to share with us? It doesn\u2019t need to be deep but it would be great if it meant something to you.<\/strong><\/p>\n

My mother’s advice when we were children was to ‘lie, steal and listen at doors’. She was joking. I think. Writers call this ‘research’.<\/p>\n