A Long Long Way

Books

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. 'A stunning achievement ... Barry has written one of the most moving fictional accounts of war that surely must rank alongside those real-life testimonies of Owen and Sasson.' Sunday Tribune 'The story grips, shocks and saddens; but most importantly refuses to be forgotten.' The Times 'In darkly beautiful, inventive and evocative prose Barry tells the filthy truths of war.' Ireland on Sunday 'With disarming lyricism, Barry's novel leads the readers into a hellish no-man's-land, where the true madness of war ...