Extraordinary . . . Barry takes us on a roaring journey . . . Powerful, exuberant fiction. --The New York Times Book Review (front cover)
Forty or so years in the future. The once-great city of Bohane on the west coast of Ireland is on its knees, infested by vice and split along tribal lines. There are the posh parts of town, but it is in the slums and backstreets of Smoketown, the tower blocks of the North Rises, and the eerie bogs of the Big Nothin' that the city really lives. For years it has all been under the control of Logan Hartnett, the dapper godfather of the Hartnett Fancy gang. But there's trouble in the air. They say Hartnett's old nemesis is back in town; his trusted henchmen are getting ambitious; and his missus wants him to give it all up and go straight. Kevin Barry's City of Bohane combines Celtic myth and a Caribbean beat, fado and film, graphic-novel cool and all the ripe inheritance of Irish literature to create something hilarious, beautiful, and startlingly new.* Shortlisted for the 2011 Costa Book Award in the First Novel category *
A blazingly original, wildly stylish, and pulpy debut novel
City of Bohane, the extraordinary first novel by the Irish writer Kevin Barry, is full of marvels. They are all literary marvels, of course: marvels of language, invention, surprise. Savage brutality is here, but so is laughter. And humanity. And the abiding ache of tragedy. --Pete Hamill, The New York Times Book Review (front page)
Forty or so years in the future. The once-great city of Bohane on the west coast of Ireland is on its knees, infested by vice and split along tribal lines. There are the posh parts of town, but it is in the slums and backstreets of Smoketown, the tower blocks of the North Rises, and the eerie bogs of the Big Nothin' that the city really lives. For years it has all been under the control of Logan Hartnett, the dapper godfather of the Hartnett Fancy gang. But there's trouble in the air. They say Hartnett's old nemesis is back in town; his trusted henchmen are getting ambitious; and his missus wants him to give it all up and go straight.
Kevin Barry's deliciously wicked collection Dark Lies the Island delivers on the many reckless promises made by his virtuosic and prizewinning debut novel, City of Bohane. It firmly establishes him as both a world-class word slinger and a masterful storyteller.
From the author of City of Bohane, a debut collection that could easily have been titled 'These Are Little Masterpieces' (The Irish Times)
This award-winning story collection by Kevin Barry summons all the laughter, darkness, and intensity of contemporary Irish life. A pair of fast girls court trouble as they cool their heels on a slow night in a small town. Lonesome hill walkers take to the high reaches in pursuit of a saving embrace. A bewildered man steps off a country bus in search of his identity--and a stiff drink. These stories, filled with a grand sense of life's absurdity, form a remarkably sure-footed collection that reads like a modern-day Dubliners. The winner of the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and a 2007 book of the year in The Irish Times, the Sunday Tribune, and Metro, There Are Little Kingdoms marks the stunning entrance of a writer who burst onto the literary scene fully formed.