Critically acclaimed when it was published in 1963, it won the AE Memorial Award from the Arts Council of Ireland and the Macauley Fellowship.

The narrator and central character is Elizabeth Reegan, a young woman who had worked as a nurse in London for two years during the Blitz.

[2][3] The generous Macauley Fellowship McGahern received for The Barracks allowed him to take a year's sabbatical from his job as a teacher.

During this year he travelled and lived in London, Spain, France, and Germany, finished his second novel The Dark, worked as a labourer and barman, and married Annikki Laaksi, a Finnish theatre director.

The Dark was published in 1965, and caused McGahern's fame in Ireland to become notoriety when it was banned under the Censorship Act because of its themes of parental and clerical child abuse.