A long long way by Sebastian Barry
Barely 18, Willie Dunne leaves Dublin in 1914 to fight for the Allied
cause, largely unaware of the growing political and religious tensions
festering back home.
Told in Barry's characteristically beautiful prose, it
evokes the camaraderie and humour of Willie and his regiment, the Royal Dublin
Fusiliers, but also the cruelty and sadness of war, and the divided loyalties
that many Irish soldiers felt. Tracing their experiences through the course of
the war, the narrative brilliantly explores and dramatises the events of the
Easter Rising within Ireland, and how such a seminal political moment came to
affect those boys off fighting for the King of England on foreign fields - the
paralysing doubts and divisions it caused them.
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