Sebastian Barry: ‘I have the sort of odd brain that is always creeping up on a new book’

You recently received the Prix de Meilleur Livre Etranger for the French translation of Old God’s Time. Félicitations! How closely do you collaborate with your translators? Does it make you see your work differently?

As it happens I have got to know Laetitia Devaux, who translated that book, quite well, and she is by all accounts a very fine translator. I’m never sure how I see my own work, translated or otherwise.

More generally, do you think your work is perceived differently at home and abroad?

They are Irish books, with Irish landscapes, even possibly the ones set in the United States, and of course all nationalities have ideas about Ireland and so read through those eyes.

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You were longlisted for this year’s Booker Prize, having been shortlisted twice, and have won the Costa Book of the Year twice among other awards. How important are prizes?

Prizes are important from the point of view of doing that difficult thing, as all publishers and booksellers and publicists will attest, which is to sell a new book.

Was Old God’s Time’s protagonist Tom Kettle named after the Irish nationalist poet who died as a British soldier in the first World War, as complex as any Sebastian Barry character?

I took the phrase The Secret Scripture from his famous sonnet, To My Daughter Betty, for the title of a previous novel. So naming the old policeman in Old God’s Time Tom Kettle was an act of gratitude.

You are now 68. Do you ever contemplate retirement or are you as ambitious and driven as ever?

I have the sort of odd brain that is always creeping up on a new book.

You’ve been praised for your high style but you’ve also recognised the extreme eloquence of abuse victims.

That radiant moment on Irish radio some years ago when the survivors of industrial schools were speaking about their experiences for the first time was for me a signal wonder in Irish life and history.

“To open one of Barry’s books is to be hit by a great gale of talk”, claimed a New Yorker profile this year. How central is dialogue to your work?

When I was a little boy without the ability to read or write, the language in people’s mouths, of the people that I loved, my parents, my great aunts, my grandfathers, seemed to have a sort of physical existence. As if I could reach out and touch the sounds. That hasn’t really changed.

It also said: “The goal of Barry’s fictional project has been to nuance and augment” the Irish foundational myth. Would you agree?

Maybe so. And yet, those people simply with their boots mired in the mud of history, trying to put one foot in front of another – I suppose I have tried to write about them.

What open secrets will the next generation of Irish writers be tackling?

I think we had best ask the magnificent Paul Lynch that question.

What was the highlight of your time as Laureate of Irish Fiction?

I often think of Marcella Bannon (co-ordinator of the Laureate programme) and myself walking on somewhat trembling feet to the doors of the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum to bring a book club to the patients there. And finding within a group of radiant people – one person who rose and made an extraordinary speech of thanks, and another an extraordinary speech about the mercies of Aquinas. We went back the way we came changed and thankful.

Which projects are you working on?

I am sneaking up on the river of a new novel and hoping that the salmon are there – and if they’re not, that I can wait patiently till they are.

Have you ever made a literary pilgrimage?

Yes, I went to see Joseph Conrad’s grave in the little Catholic cemetery in Canterbury. He was tucked in there, quiet as you like.

What is the best writing advice you have heard?

Never be stopped by anything, in particular yourself ...

Who do you admire the most?

I am an inveterate Tutu-ist, as in, I have always admired the humour and apparent goodness of Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

You are supreme ruler for a day. Which law do you pass or abolish?

I pass a law that forbids any person of any clergy to make pronouncements regarding human sexuality.

Which current book, film and podcast would you recommend?

Claire Kilroy has written a permanent book in Soldier, Sailor. Pain and Glory, a recent film by Pedro Almodóvar. Podcasts I don’t know much about.

Which public event affected you most?

The marriage-equality referendum.

The most remarkable place you have visited?

There is nowhere more beautiful than the drive over the mountains from Laragh to here.

Your most treasured possession?

The rings I wear, given to me by my wife, Ali, and my daughter, Coral.

What is the most beautiful book that you own?

The special edition of a Booker shortlisted book, A Long Long Way – the designer actually created a trench in the leather.

Which writers, living or dead, would you invite to your dream dinner party?

Colm Tóibín, Daniel Mendelsohn. Philip Casey was an angel even before he left us. George Eliot. Sappho.

The best and worst things about where you live?

The best and worst things are the same: it’s very isolated, but then I am an islander by nature.

What is your favourite quotation?

Seamus Heaney: “And here is love/ like a tinsmith’s scoop/ sunk past its gleam/ in the meal-bin.”

Who is your favourite fictional character?

Axel Heist in Joseph Conrad’s Victory.

A book to make me laugh?

Lucky Jim by Kingley Amis.

A book that might move me to tears?

Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy.