Barry's Days Without End follow-up goes to Faber

Laureate for Irish Fiction Sebastian Barry has written a follow-up to his Costa-winning Days Without End, dubbed "brave and beautiful" by publisher Faber.

Angus Cargill, editorial director at Faber, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights excluding Canada to A Thousand Moons from agent Derek Johns, who has since retired. The title is slated for publication in March 2020.

The follow-up to 2016’s Days Without End (Faber) follows Winona, a young Lakota orphan adopted by former soldiers Thomas McNulty and John Cole - all characters which first featured in the original book. Days Without End followed the two solders in the US army in the 1850's who went to fight in the Indian wars and, ultimately, the Civil War. A Thousand Moons is set 20 years later.

“Living with Thomas and John on the farm they work in 1870s Tennessee, she is educated and loved, forging a life for herself beyond the violence and dispossession of her past,” Faber said “But the fragile harmony of her unlikely family unit, in the aftermath of the Civil War, is soon threatened by a further traumatic event, one which Winona struggles to confront, let alone understand.”

The book offers “gorgeous, lyrical prose”, the publisher said, offering “a powerful, moving study of one woman’s journey, of her determination to write her own future, and of the enduring human capacity for love”.

The current Laureate for Irish Fiction, Barry's novels have twice won the Costa Book of the Year award - most recently for Days Without End (Faber) - as well as bagging the IBW Book Award and the Walter Scott Prize. He had two consecutive novels shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, A Long Long Way (2005) and The Secret Scripture (2008), and has also won the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Prize, the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He lives in County Wicklow. 

Cargill said: “A new novel from Sebastian Barry is a huge moment for Faber as a company, but to have A Thousand Moons as his follow-up to Days Without End is incredibly exciting. Told in the voice of Winona – this extraordinary character trying to live through the trauma of dispossession – it is a brave and beautiful novel, which will, once again, capture readers’ hearts.”