If you’ve read Station Eleven or the Plague you’ll know big public gatherings are not a great idea right now. So, to look after you all and those you love, I’ve taken the difficult decision to cancel all events for the paperback launch of You Will Be Safe Here.

I am sorry this means we can't share the book in person and that I won't get to meet you and hear your stories. As soon as it's safe to do so, I will be planning more events.

For now, you can still pre-order the paperback and have it delivered to you wherever you are. It would *really* be a big help to me if you felt able to do that and I thank you for it:

https://youwillbesafehere.shortstack.com/kw8p0

Please consider supporting your local indie bookshop as they are all really struggling right now.

I'll be popping up to do readings via Facebook Live, twitter and insta so please follow whatever social works for you:

Insta: @mrdamianbarr
Twitter: @Damian_Barr
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MrDamianBarr/

Thank you for all your support. Take good care,

Damian x.

You Will Be Safe Here with Damian Barr

The stunning and powerful début novel from the award-winning author of Maggie & Me (and great friend of Gay's the Word).

Damian will be reading from the book, chatting briefly with Jim MacSweeney and taking questions from the audience.

A free non-ticketed event. Please indicate if you are intending to attend here on Facebook. Doors 6.55pm.

You Will Be Safe Here

A beautiful and heart-breaking story set in South Africa where two mothers - a century apart - must fight for their sons, unaware their fates are inextricably linked.

Orange Free State, 1901. At the height of the Boer War, Sarah van der Watt and her six-year-old son Fred can only watch as the British burn their farm. The polite invaders cart them off to Bloemfontein Concentration Camp promising you will be safe here.

Johannesburg, 2010. Sixteen-year-old Willem is an outsider who just wants to be left alone with his Harry Potter books and Britney, his beloved pug. Worried he’s turning out soft, his Ma and her new boyfriend send him to New Dawn Safari Camp, where they ‘make men out of boys.’ Guaranteed.

The red earth of the veldt keeps countless secrets whether beaten by the blistering sun or stretching out beneath starlit stillness. But no secret can stay buried forever.

Published in paperback by Bloomsbury Publishing UK on April 4th

Damian Barr is an award-winning writer and columnist. Maggie & Me, his memoir about coming of age and coming out in Thatcher's Britain, was a BBC Radio 4 ‘Book of the Week’, Sunday Times ‘Memoir of the Year’ and won the Paddy Power Political Books 'Satire' Award and Stonewall Writer of the Year Award. Damian writes columns for the Big Issue and High Life and often appears on BBC Radio 4. He is creator and host of his own Literary Salon that premieres work from established and emerging writers. You Will Be Safe Here is his debut novel. Damian Barr lives in Brighton. Damian Barr

Powerful - MAGGIE O'FARRELL

Beautiful - MAX PORTER

Stunning - JOHN BOYNE

There is pain on these pages and poetry too. I left this book bruised yet somehow better for it - TAYARI JONES, THE OBSERVER BOOKS OF THE YEAR

Barr has achieved something remarkable – a powerfully moving tale - THE OBSERVER

Barr’s first novel is distinguished by its compassion, its wisdom and its remarkable sense of poetry - THE GUARDIAN

Both a damning indictment of one of the most ignoble periods in British history and a haunting portrait of modern South Africa - METRO

Eye-opening and meticulously researched - SPECTATOR

Giving voice to victims - Damian Barr and Fiona Snyckers talk to Francois Smith. Presented by Jonathan Ball Publishers and PanMacmillan.
In his sensational novel, You Will Be Safe Here, partly based on the death in 2011 of 15-year-old Raymond Buys in a so-called right-wing youth resilience camp, the Scot Damian Barr attempts to give voice to the victims of gender violence through his principle character, the “moffie” boy Willem Brandt. In Lacuna, Fiona Snyckers turns Nobel Prize winner JM Coetzee’s dramatic novel Disgrace on its head when Lucy Lurie, the victim of a cruel rape, says: “Enough. I am going to tell my own story as I experienced it.” Francois Smith (Kamphoer/ The Camp Whore) leads the discussion.

Tickets and full event information here

Skrywers-langtafel (Writer's Long Table) with Kabous Meiring and Loftus Marais (presenters).

Is it possible to communicate with people through books? Can we learn more about each other through them? Twelve writers sit around a long table and discuss language, culture and borders over a festive three course meal in the newly restored De Volkskombuis restaurant. With Anoeschka von Meck, New Yorker Suketu Mehta, Marita van der Vyver, Fred Khumalo, Carina Stander, Scotsman Damian Barr, Jolyn Phillips, China Mouton, Olivia M. Coetzee, Bibi Slippers, Dutch poet Benno Barnard and Fatima Dike.

Tickets and full information here

Damian Barr, Elsabé Brits and Chris Schoeman talk to Fransjohan Pretorius - Presented by Protea Boekhuis and Jonathan Ball Publishers.

Unlikely war heroes are at the heart of the discussion between Fransjohan Pretorius, the Scot Damian Barr, Elsabé Brits and Chris Schoeman. Damian’s novel, You Will Be Safe Here, is partly based on the fictitious journals of a Free State woman farmer, Sarah van der Watt, who with her son was sent to a British concentration camp. But the Free State is also the world of Emily Hobhouse and her revelations about war atrocities committed by the British (as seen in Elsabé’s Emily Hobhouse – Beloved Traitor), and where Commander Hans Lötter won his greatest victory before appearing before a British court, as described in Chris’ Rebel.

Tickets and full event info here

Free - BOOKING ESSENTIAL
Dunedin City Library, Dunedin, New Zealand

An Evening With Damian Barr
Damian will be reading from and discussing his debut novel You Will Be Safe Here. This event is in association with the Centre of Irish and Scottish Studies at Otago University and will be chaired by Professor Liam McIlvanney at the Dunedin City Library.

GET TICKETS

YOU WILL BE SAFE HERE
Damian Barr / chaired by Sharon Davis

“You will be safe here”: a promise twice made and twice broken in this harrowing, powerful debut novel from acclaimed author Damian Barr. Sarah is interned with her son in one of the world’s first concentration camps. A contemptuous stepfather dispatches young Willem to a brutal training camp to learn to “become a man”. Moving deftly between the Boer War and contemporary South Africa, You Will Be Safe Here illuminates hidden cruelties – past and present – to explore the heartbreaking legacy of trauma.
Sharon Davis is a four-time Walkley award winning documentary producer and journalist whose body of work in television, radio and print spans more than 25 years. Most recently she developed and produced a new podcast The Monthly Hour for Schwartz Media.

Pioneer Women's Memorial Garden, West Stage, Adelaide Writers' Week
Free
CLICK HERE for the full programme:

 https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/writers-week/?view=lineup#lineupBreak