[citation needed] He was educated at Catholic University School and Trinity College Dublin, where he read English and Latin.
[10][11] This was followed by several books of poetry and a further novel, The Engine of Owl-Light in 1987, before his career as a playwright began with his first play produced in the Abbey Theatre, Boss Grady's Boys, in 1988.
[14] Both The Steward of Christendom and the novel The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty (1998) are about the dislocations (physical and otherwise) of loyalist Irish people during the political upheavals of the early 20th century.
The title character of the latter work is a young man forced to leave Ireland by his former friends in the aftermath of the Anglo-Irish War.
[citation needed] Barry's 2008 novel The Secret Scripture won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction (announced in August 2009), the oldest such award in the UK, the 2008 Costa Book of the Year (announced 27 January 2009),[16] and (in French translation Le testament caché) the 2010 Cezam Prix Littéraire Inter CE.
[17] The Secret Scripture was also a favourite to win the 2008 Man Booker Prize, narrowly losing out to Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger.
[22] Barry's next novel, The Temporary Gentleman (2014), tells the story of Jack McNulty—an Irishman whose commission in the British army in WWII was never permanent.
More than 60 boxes of papers document his diverse writing career and range of creative output, which includes drawings, poetry, short stories, novels, essays, and scripts.