Sebastian Barry

The acclaimed Irish playwright and novelist makes a rare Midwestern appearance to read from his newest work.

(From the Waterstone's website:) All newcomers welcome. Talk about this months book and share your varied opinions!! Further details: 01228 542 300

Admission €10.00/€8.00. "How does the novelist refract, through the haze of memory, the secret history of a life long-lived? How does the past hold the present in its thrall? And how do these recollections help shape our understanding of our own lives? Two new novels explore this fertile terrain ... (more)with compelling results."

The Secret Scripture (Faber) ) is a follow up to Sebastian Barry’s A Long Long Way, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker and IMPAC prizes and winner of the Kerry Group Prize for Irish Fiction. Nearing her hundredth birthday, Roseanne McNulty faces an uncertain future as the mental hospital where ... (more)she has spent the best part of her adult life prepares for closure. Told through her journal and that of her psychiatrist Dr Grene, the story that emerges – of her family in 1930’s Sligo – is of a life blighted by maltreatment and ignorance and becomes an alternative and secret history of Ireland. He will be in conversation with Richard Mason, author of The Drowning People, an international bestseller translated into 20 languages, whose new novel The Lighted Rooms (Weidenfeld & Nicholson) is an epic story of shifting family responsibilities, moving from British concentration camps in 19th century South Africa to the sanitized soullessness of a Wandsworth retirement home.