on the side of canaan

"On the Other Side of Canaan" is a novel by contemporary Irish writer Sebastian Barry. The work won the 2012 Walter Scott Literary Prize and was nominated for the 2011 Man Booker Prize. The protagonist of the story, eighty-nine-year-old Lily Brie, decided to end her life in a "quiet way". She spends her whole life running and avoiding, but fate can always strangle her neck in the most unexpected way, take away her true love, destroy their bodies, tear their souls, and leave none behind.

Generations of Irish people who have been scarred and saddled with painful ethical paradox silently held accountable to history. Three wars ruined three generations, and Barry observed the tortuous fate of a family from a profound historical perspective. Sebastian Barry tells yet another heartbreaking story with his trademark exquisite prose, hiding the deepest pain in the human heart in a fleeting flash, which Barry's mastery lies in sketching , Sometimes it is a sentence, so the hatred for war and the helplessness for fate are all implied in it.