City of Bohane, Kevin Barry
City of Bohane, Kevin Barry
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Club: $5.62

City of Bohane

Author: Kevin Barry

Narrator: Kevin Barry

Unabridged: 8 hr 41 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/12/2013


Synopsis

Shortlisted for the 2011 Costa First Novel Award

Winner of the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award

Forty 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 Northside Rises and the eerie bogs of Big Nothin' that the city really lives.

For years, the city has been in the cool grip of Logan Hartnett, the dapper godfather of the Hartnett Fancy gang. But there's trouble in the air. They say his 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... And then there's his mother.

About Kevin Barry

Kevin Barry is the author of the highly acclaimed novel City of Bohane and two short-story collections, Dark Lies the Island and There Are Little Kingdoms. He was awarded the Rooney Prize in 2007 and won the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award in 2012. For City of Bohane, he was short-listed for the Costa First Novel Award and the Irish Book Award, and won the Author’s Club Best First Novel Prize, the European Union Prize for Literature, and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and elsewhere. He lives in County Sligo in Ireland.


Reviews

Goodreads review by karen on April 08, 2019

i do not know if you will like this book. usually, i am pretty good with the readers' advisory thing - i have this innate sense that automatically provides me with a list of names of people i think would appreciate the book, even if i didn't like it myself. call it a gift. but this one - i am genuine......more

Goodreads review by Dave on November 07, 2022

Before reading the City of Bohane (2011) I had read Kevin Barry’s more recent Night Boat to Tangier, and That Old Country Music, both of which I loved. Or rather, I listened to them, because while you should usually read physical books that pay as much attention to language as Barry does, but he mak......more

Goodreads review by Ethel on December 14, 2011

Kevin Barry is a genius. He is doing with his life and his gift exactly what he was put on this earth to do and continues the long and great line of Irish writers. His debut novel City of Bohane is an original and remarkable work of inventiveness. Set in the fictional and futuristic city of Bohane, s......more

Goodreads review by Paul on April 29, 2019

City of Bohane, Kevin Barry's debut novel, won the prestigious international Impac prize in 2013, one of the my favourite literary prizes as one of the few that treats translated fiction on a par with English language originals ([URL not allowed]). And his 2nd novel, Beatlebon......more

Goodreads review by Michael on December 26, 2024

I have to say I am glad I chose to listen to this one. There's a lot of made-up vocabulary, mixed in with Irish slang anyway, and I could get a sense of what was going on from the author's inflections. It reminded me of reading Clockwork Orange when I was in high school, just trying to define things......more


Quotes

The most arresting and original writer to emerge from these islands in years Irvine Welsh

Hilarious and unpredictable - and always brilliant Roddy Doyle

Astonishing.This marks him out as a writer of great promise Guardian

Beautiful, arresting, precise...a compelling creation Irish Times

An electrifying masterpiece Joseph O'Connor

City of Bohane is a book fizzing with energy, juiced up on the possibilities of language and replete with a plot Glasgow Herald

Exuberant, spine-tinglingly atmospheric... This hyper-real world stuffed with overblown violence and all manner of cartoon-like grotesques is certainly a highly entertaining place to lose yourself in Metro

Exhilarating ...this novel confirms the arrival of a fresh and original voice in Irish literature... Hugely entertaining and original Irish Sunday Times

The prose is sizzling, its molecules rocked by the force of collision...outrageously talented author...The power of the writing - of the writer's imagination - is the siren call that hooks you...It stuns you with its daring...but it works Scotsman

Addictive first novel...this slangy, plosive-packed prose is what makes the book a success...an expert manipulation of syntax keeps things zingy...it is a plus point that the dystopia bears no allegorical weight, thriving purely as an imaginary realm to be taken at face value Sunday Times


Awards

  • I.M.P.A.C. Dublin Award