Days without End, Sebastian Barry
Days without End, Sebastian Barry
12 Rating(s)
List: $19.95 | Sale: $13.97
Club: $9.97

Days without End

Author: Sebastian Barry

Narrator: Aidan Kelly

Unabridged: 7 hr 58 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/24/2017

Synopsis

From Sebastian Barry, a two-time finalist for the Man Booker Prize, comes a powerful and unforgettable novel chronicling a young Irish immigrant’s army years in the Indian wars and the American Civil War.Thomas McNulty, having fled the Great Famine in Ireland and now barely seventeen years old, signs up for the US Army in the 1850s and with his brother in arms, John Cole, goes to fight in the Indian Wars—against the Sioux and the Yurok—and, ultimately, in the Civil War. Orphans of terrible hardships themselves, they find these days to be vivid and alive, despite the horrors they see and are complicit in.Moving from the plains of Wyoming to Tennessee, Sebastian Barry’s latest work is a masterpiece of atmosphere and language. An intensely poignant story of two men and the makeshift family they create with a young Sioux girl, Winona, Days without End is a fresh and haunting portrait of the most fateful years in American history and is a novel never to be forgotten.

About Sebastian Barry

Sebastian Barry, named Irish fiction laureate in 2018, is a playwright and author whose novels include A Long Long Way, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, as was The Secret Scripture, which was also a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist and winner of the Costa Book of the Year Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, and the Irish Novel of the Year. His plays have been produced in London, Dublin, Sydney, and New York.

About Aidan Kelly

Aidan Kelly is an Earphones Award–winning narrator and a Dublin and London-based actor with extensive stage, film, television, and radio experience. He has appeared as Tom in the Druid Theatre’s production of The Good Father, directed by Garry Hynes for the Galway Arts Festival. He won the Irish Sunday Tribune Award for his performances in Howie the Rookie and Comedians.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jaline

Sebastian Barry is not a writer. He is an alchemist who turns what is base and depressing and disastrous into gold that sparkles with exuberance, a sense of adventure, and hope. And a vein of optimistic and wide-eyed wonder runs through the gold like silver. This novel tells the story of two young or......more

Goodreads review by Hannah

Click here to watch a video review of this book on my channel, From Beginning to Bookend. A heartrending, vivid retelling of the Indian Wars, recounted by a protagonist with a distinct and memorable narrative voice. Days Without End being absent from the 2017 Man Booker shortlist is a travesty.......more

Quotes

“A great American novel which happens to have been written by an Irishman.” Times Literary Supplement (London)

“A work of staggering openness…Barry conjures a world in miniature, inward, quiet, sacred.” The Guardian (London)

“Barry is the most humane of writers…beauty is mined to its last redemptive glint…A great novel.” Irish Times

“Written in a gorgeous style that blends Barry’s characteristic eloquence with the straight-talk of early America.” Financial Times (London)

“If an audiobook that is gorgeously written, tells a heart-thumping story, and is performed with flawless taste and authority is a cause for celebration, chill the champagne. Aiden Kelly gives us Thomas McNulty, a young refugee from Sligo…[in] a supple and powerful performance by Kelly, whose Thomas is somehow both pragmatic and full of wonder. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.” AudioFile

“Remarkable…Life-affirming in the truest and best ways.” Daily Mail (London)

“Narrator Aidan Kelly’s voice is lilting and poetic, suited to an enthusiastic storyteller with a knack for seeing the humor in almost any situation. His rendering of Barry’s beautifully expressive language draws listeners in with excellent pacing.” Library Journal (audio review)

“Barry…offers a meditation on the nature of what it means to be an American, and his conclusions are both complex and fearless. A beautifully realized historical novel.” Library Journal (starred review)

“A tour de force of style and atmosphere…a timeless work of historical fiction.” Booklist (starred review)

“Lively, richly detailed…A contribution not just to Irish literature in English, but also the literature of the American West.” Kirkus Reviews

Awards

  • Costa Book Award
  • Guardian Best Book of the Year
  • AudioFile Earphones Award
  • Walter Scott Prize Winner
  • Man Booker Prize
  • Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
  • International Dublin Literary Award
  • NPR Pick
  • Time Magazine Best Book
  • RUSA Notable Book
  • Library Journal Best Audiobook
  • Reading the West Book Award
  • Guardian Pick
  • Publishers Weekly Pick
  • Millions.com Pick
  • Literary Hub Pick
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