Bibliography and Book of the Week – Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture

Sebastian Barry is a successful poet and playwright, and The Secret Scripture makes use of a strong structure and haunting language to maximum effect. Nearing her one-hundredth birthday, Roseanne McNulty faces an uncertain future, as the Roscommon Regional Mental hospital where she's spent the best part of her adult life prepares for closure. Over the weeks leading up to this upheaval, she talks often with her psychiatrist Dr Grene, and their relationship intensifies and complicates.

Barry was born in Dublin in 1955 and educated at the Catholic University School and Trinity College Dublin. He now lives in Wicklow with his wife and three children. His previous novel, A Long Long Way, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Dublin International Impac Prize. The Secret Scripture is a powerful novel, and should be in the running for the Man Booker Prize later in the year. It has been published simultaneously in paperback and hardback – the latter is well worth picking up now.

Bibliography

Novels

Macker's Garden (Irish Writer's Cooperative, 1982)
Time Out of Mind/Strappado Square (Dublin, Wolfhound, 1983);
The Engine of Owl-Light (Manchester, Carcanet, 1987);
The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty (Picador, 1998)
Annie Dunne (Faber and Faber, paperback original, 2002)
A Long Long Way (Faber and Faber, paperback original, 2005)
The Secret Scripture (Faber and Faber, 2008)

Plays

Andersen's English (Faber paperback orginal, 2010) 
Tales of Ballycumber (Faber paperback original, 2010)
The Pride of Parnell Street (Faber and Faber, paperback original, 2007)
Fred and Jane / Whistling Psyche (Faber and Faber, paperback original, 2004)
Hinterland (Faber and Faber, paperback original, 2002)
Our Lady of Sligo (Methuen paperback, 1998)
Boss Gradys Boys and Prayers of Sherkin (Methuen, 1992);
The Only True History of Lizzie Finn, The Steward of Christendom (Metheun, 1995);
White Woman Street (London, Methuen, 1995)


Poems

The Water Colourist (Dublin, Dolmen 1983);
The Rhetorical Town (Dolmen 1985);
Fanny Hawke Goes to the Mainland Forever (Dublin, Raven Arts Press, 1987);
The Pinkening Boy (Dublin, New Island Books, 2004) [limited signed edition, Oxford, Joe McCann, 2004; 65 copies numbered 1-65 bound in cloth, in glassine dj, signed by author; 20 number I to XX in Qtr Goatskin to Brown Cloth, signed by the author. Total edition of 85.]

Other

Elsewhere: The Adventures of Belemus (Brogeen Books, 1985)
The Inherited Boundaries: Younger Poets of the Republic of Ireland (editor) Dolmen Press, 1986