On Canaan's Side - Paperback

by Sebastian Barry (Author)

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.

Author Biography

Sebastian Barry's novel A Long Long Way was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, as was The Secret Scripture, which was also a Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist, winner of the Costa Book of the Year award and the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction, as well as the Irish Novel of the Year, and was selected as a Best Book of the Year by The Boston Globe and The Economist. His other novels include The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty and Annie Dunne. His plays have been produced in London, Dublin, Sydney and New York. Barry lives in Wicklow, Ireland, with his wife and three children.