LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE Named a Best Book of 2023 by the New Yorker , Washington Post , NPR, and Kirkus Reviews “You should be reading Sebastian Barry. [He] has a special understanding of the human heart.” — T he Atlantic “A prose stylist of near-miraculous skill. . . Barry reaches deep into the messenger bag of mystery fiction and turns the whole business inside out . . . marvelous.” — The Washington Post “An unforgettable novel from one of our finest writers.” —Douglas Stuart, author of Shuggie Bain From the five-time Booker Prize nominee and 2018-2021 Laureate for Irish Fiction, a virtuosic, profound novel exploring love, memory, grief, and long-buried secrets Recently retired policeman Tom Kettle is settling into the quiet of his new home, a lean-to annexed to a Victorian castle overlooking the Irish Sea. For months he has barely seen a soul, catching only glimpses of his eccentric landlord and a nervous young mother who has moved in next door. Occasionally, fond memories return of his family: his beloved wife June and their two children, Winnie and Joe. But when two former colleagues turn up at his door with questions about a decades-old case, one which Tom never quite came to terms with, he finds himself pulled into the darkest currents of his past. A beautiful, haunting novel in which nothing is quite as it seems, Old God's Time is about what we live through, what we live with, and what may survive of us.