Literature

Walk the Line with Sebastian Barry: ‘There’s no career, there’s just life’

The award-winning author on finding your way, the writer’s space and the importance of simple things

‘You find your way, but it’s totally in the dark. You are a cyclist in the dark but that’s fine too, I see that now’

My generation came out of college, if we went to college, in the late 1970s. We looked around us and heard there was a thing called jobs, but possibly not in our country. Most people went to England or America, nearly everyone I was at Trinity with seemed to disappear which was discombobulating in itself, but I decided to try and stay.

I was living in a house on Leeson Street in Dublin. I started ...