This event is part of our online Book Club series, in which we’ll be delving between the covers to examine the merits of a carefully chosen and remarkable book. You are invited to join in, as host Alex Clark settles down with a writer or fellow book lover for an entertaining evening of sparkling chat. If possible, do read the book in advance for maximum enjoyment.  

‘Nobody pushes the language, and the heart, and the two together, quite like Sebastian Barry does.’ – Ali Smith  

Twice Booker Prize shortlisted Irish author Sebastian Barry joins us for our April book club event with his powerful latest book, A Thousand Moons.  

Following Days Without End, which maps a fictionalised version of the author’s own family history and traces the story of two soldiers who find intimacy amidst the civil war, A Thousand Moons sees Barry turn unflinchingly to questions of identity, race, and sexuality.  

Barry unfolds the story through the voice of Winona, member of the Lakota tribe, which has been brutalised by the civil war, and adopted daughter of Thomas McNulty and John Cole (the two central characters from his previous book). Set on a starvecrow farm in Tennessee during the politically fragmented and uncertain post-war period, violence strikes Winona’s life once more and she sets off, concealed and protected by male clothing, in search of revenge. 

Join Barry alongside writer, broadcaster and chair Alex Clark to explore this captivating piece of historical fiction that speaks to contemporary politics in America and beyond. 

• Days Without End, Sebastian Barry 
• A Long Long Way, Sebastian Barry 
• The Secret Scripture, Sebastian Barry 
• A Thousand Moons by Sebastian Barry review, Alex Preston, The Guardian 
• Family stories mean a whole different thing in your 60s, Sebastian Barry, The Guardian 

Sebastian Barry was born in Dublin in 1955. His novels and plays have won, among other awards, the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Prize, the Costa Book of the Year award, the Irish Book Awards Best Novel, the Independent Booksellers Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He also had two consecutive novels, A Long Long Way (2005) and The Secret Scripture (2008), shortlisted for the MAN Booker Prize. He lives in Wicklow, Ireland.