The Secret Scripture

**THE NEWER WORLD - THE UNFORGETTABLE NEW NOVEL FROM SEBASTIAN BARRY - IS AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER NOW** AN IRISH TIMES BEST IRISH BOOK OF THE 21ST CENTURY Winner of the 2008 Costa Book of the Year Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize 2008 Winner of the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year 2008 Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2008 A Sunday Times Top 100 Novel of the Twenty-First Century Featured on BBC2's 'Between the Covers' as a Booker Gem 2021 Roseanne McNulty is one of the last inhabitants of a soon-to-be closed asylum in the West of Ireland. No one knows how old she is or can remember why she was committed. But she knows and, finally, is about to tell her psychiatrist, Dr Grene. Refracted through the haze of memory, Roseanne's account is an extraordinary alternative history of Ireland, and the story of a life blighted by mistreatment, yet marked still by passion and hope.

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

A beautiful and moving novel of a remarkable woman's stolen life, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2008.