PEN World Voices Festival: Sebastian Barry reads from The Temporary Gentleman

Highly acclaimed author Sebastian Barry reads from his new book, The Temporary Gentleman, a novel written from the perspective Jack McNulty, an Irishman who lived through a great war and the subsequent peace, and who is haunted by his great love.

J.M. Coetzee said of his work that it was, “a deeply moving story of courage and fidelity.” The New York Times called his previous novels, “language of surpassing beauty….It is like a song, with all the pulse of the Irish language.”

Novelist, poet, and playwright Sebastian Barry was born in Dublin in 1955. He is the author of the highly acclaimed novels The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty, Annie Dunne, and A Long Long Way, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His novel The Secret Scripture, from which he read at Glucksman Ireland House NYU in 2009, was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and On Canaan’s Side was longlisted for the Man Booker and was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Award. He lives with wife and three children in County Wicklow, Ireland.

Part of the 2014 PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature NYU Mini-Festival.

The Tenth Annual PEN World Voices of International Literature: 2014

30 writers from 25 nations convene to New York to celebrate the power of the written word in action. The program features performances, discussions, one-on-one conversations, and readings at venues crisscrossing the city, from Harlem to Wall Street. See www.worldvoices.pen.org.