With his recent book Days Without End, Irish playwright, novelist and poet Sebastian Barry has become the first two-time winner of the Walter Scott prize for historical fiction. His first win was for On Canaan’s Side in 2012.

Historian Alistair Moffat, one of the seven judges, said, “Days Without End took the lead for the glorious and unusual story, the seamlessly interwoven period research, and above all for the unfaltering power and authenticity of the narrative voice, a voice no reader is likely to forget.”

Not only Barry, but the book itself is a double-winner: in January it won the Costa Book of the Year award. Narrated by Irish immigrant Thomas McNulty who flees the Great Famine for the nascent United States, the story takes in an epic sweep of McNulty’s adopted land’s history and landscape as he and his companion John Cole travel the country to fight in the Indian wars and the American Civil War. On Canaan’s Side, which had been long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, had a similar theme of characters escaping the Irish war of independence to create new lives in the US.

The Walter Scott prize is awarded annually at the Borders book festival to the best United Kingdom, Irish and Commonwealth novel set in a period at least 60 years ago. The prize was founded in memory of Walter Scott who has been credited as the inventor of historical fiction with his novel Waverly, published in 1814.

Past winners of the prize include Simon Mawer (Tightrope, set in France during the Second World War), John Spurling (The Ten Thousand Things, set in 14th century China), Robert Harris (An Officer and a Spy, set in 1890s France), Tan Twan Eng (The Garden of Evening Mists, set in 1940s and ’50s Malaya), Andrea Levy (The Long Song, set in 1820s Jamaica), and Hilary Mantel, who won the inaugural prize in 2010 with her novel Wolf Hall, set in 16th century England.

This year’s contenders were Golden Hill by Francis Spufford, A Country Road, A Tree by Jo Baker, The Vanishing Futurist by Charlotte Hobson, The Good People by Hannah Kent, Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift, and The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, July 2nd, 2017