Days Without End: Sebastian Barry - Tapa blanda

A beautiful, savage, tender, searing work of art. Sentence after perfect sentence it grips and does not let go. (DONAL RYAN)

A true leftfield wonder: Sebastian Barry's Days Without End is a violent, superbly lyrical western offering a sweeping vision of America in the making [and] the most fascinating line-by-line first person narration I've come across in years. (KAZUO ISHIGURO)

I am a huge fan - nobody writes like, nobody takes lyrical risks like, nobody pushes the language, and the heart, and the two together, quite like Sebastian Barry does, so that you come out of whatever he writes like you've been away, in another climate. (ALI SMITH)

A book about cruel times, for cruel times. And tender enough to swell your throat ... Not since Peter Carey's Ned Kelly has a narrative voice so got inside my head. (Tom Sutcliffe BBC Radio 4)

The novel comes close to being a modern masterpiece. Written in a style that is as delicate and economical as a spider's web, it builds to a climax that is as brutally effective as a punch to the gut ... The Secret Scripture and A Long Long Way were shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and there is every reason to think that this novel could do just as well next year. It could even go a stage farther. It really is that good. (Robert Douglas-Fairhurst The Times)

'Occasionally you know that one of the writers alive at the same time as you has written the book they were born to write. With Barry, it's as if every book he writes is a bit like this - and then there's this novel. It's a masterpiece. Barry writes warmth so that warmth is a form of truth.' (Ali Smith Guardian Best Books 2017)

'The book that has left the most profound impression on me this year is Sebastian Barry's Days Without End (Faber). It's a love story, a profound dissection of the horrors of war and a lesson in the hidden side of history, but its impact comes from the dense, rich, imaginative use of language. Absolutely captivating.' (Val McDermid Guardian Best Books 2017)

'Sebastian Barry's Days Without End (Faber) totally captivated me - the voice is compelling and immersive and tells a story that we don't get to hear. Barry faces up to the history of the settlers in America and the slaughter of the Sioux during the American civil war. It is a masterpiece; hypnotic and strange, full of its own music.' (Jackie Kay Guardian Best Books 2017)

'As for fiction, I came a little late to Sebastian Barry's Days Without End (Faber) but it really is an amazing achievement, especially the brilliantly sustained first-person voice. For page after page, I found myself thinking, how does he do this?' (David Nicholls Guardian Best Books 2017)

'Two brilliant Irish novels stood out, one lushly lyrical, one laconic, both so well written they make pain into literary delight. Days Without End (Faber), Sebastian Barry's novel of war and defiant love, is as full of outrage and blood and grief as one of Kurosawa's Shakespearean movies and it's as gorgeously beautiful too.' (Lucy Hughes-Hallett Guardian Best Books 2017)

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.