LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE
Named a Best Book of 2023 by the
New Yorker,
Washington Post, NPR, and
Kirkus Reviews "You should be reading Sebastian Barry. [He] has a special understanding of the human heart."
--The Atlantic "A prose stylist of near-miraculous skill. . . Barry reaches deep into the messenger bag of mystery fiction and turns the whole business inside out . . . marvelous."
--The Washington Post "An unforgettable novel from one of our finest writers." --Douglas Stuart, author of
Shuggie Bain From the five-time Booker Prize nominee and 2018-2021 Laureate for Irish Fiction, a virtuosic, profound novel exploring love, memory, grief, and long-buried secrets
Recently retired policeman Tom Kettle is settling into the quiet of his new home, a lean-to annexed to a Victorian castle overlooking the Irish Sea. For months he has barely seen a soul, catching only glimpses of his eccentric landlord and a nervous young mother who has moved in next door. Occasionally, fond memories return of his family: his beloved wife June and their two children, Winnie and Joe. But when two former colleagues turn up at his door with questions about a decades-old case, one which Tom never quite came to terms with, he finds himself pulled into the darkest currents of his past.
A beautiful, haunting novel in which nothing is quite as it seems,
Old God's Time is about what we live through, what we live with, and what may survive of us.
Sebastian Barry was born in Dublin in 1955. He is the author of eight previous novels, as well as numerous plays. He is the first novelist to twice win the Costa Book of the Year award, for Days Without End and The Secret Scripture, has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, for A Long Long Way and The Secret Scripture, and has twice been longlisted for the Booker Prize, for Days Without End and On Canaan's Side. He was the Laureate for Irish Fiction from 2018-2021, and lives in County Wicklow, Ireland.
