Kevin Barry is the author of the novels Beatlebone and City of Bohane and two short story collections. He was awarded the Rooney Prize in 2007 and won the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Prize in 2012. For City of Bohane he won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the European Prize for Literature and the Authors' Club First Novel Prize, and was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and the Irish Book Awards. His second novel Beatlebone was the winner of the Goldsmiths Prize and was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards.
A blackly comic journey into the abyss . . . Beautifully written .
. . Barry is a clarvoyant narrator of the male psyche and a
consistent lyrical visionary . . . What distinguishes this book
beyond its humour, terror and beauty of description is its moral
perception . . . It is a plunging spiritual immersion into the
parlous souls of wrongful men
* * Guardian * *
I devoured Night Boat to Tangier. I loved the potent truth of it
all, drenched in damage and romance. The Barry turn of phrase is a
true wonder of this world
*MAX PORTER*
It's a Kevin Barry novel, so the brilliance is expected; everything
else is a brilliant surprise
*RODDY DOYLE*
The novel 2019 has been waiting for - a masterpiece delivered by a
glittering talent at the peak of his powers. It leaves the rest of
the class looking somewhat underpowered and unambitious, perhaps
even a bit shop-worn . . . If Beatlebone was his breakout work,
Night Boat to Tangier should cement the Irishman's place among the
literary elite
* * Big Issue * *
If prose were gold and diamonds there'd be thousands of hell-bent
prospectors heading for the Black Hills of Kevin Barry's
glistening, sparkling novel
*SEBASTIAN BARRY*
Barry is riding the waves with Night Boat to Tangier . . .
Reminiscent of Waiting for Godot
* * The Times * *
Extremely talented creator, Kevin Barry, has a fine instinct for
the sweet spot where the comforting familiarities of genre blend
into the surprises and provocations of art . . . Powerfully
evoked
* * New York Times Book Review * *
Brilliantly funny and terrifying at once, I was completely lost
inside its dark craziness. Barry blends glorious voluptuous prose
with entrancing storytelling
*TESSA HADLEY*
Captures male friendship with rare brilliance . . . The pair's
vaudevillian patter, dancing back and forth with an irrepressibly
buoyant Irish rhythm, reminds you of Didi and Gogo in Beckett's
Waiting for Godot, while their gleefully ominous threats of
violence bristle off the page in a way that recalls Harold Pinter
or Martin McDonagh . . . Startlingly good
* * Independent * *
Two ageing Irish drug smugglers sit in a Spanish ferry terminal
trading absurd jokes and quasi-philosophical banter in this tautly
written novel
* * New Yorker * *
A rogue gem of a novel . . . The seedy underbelly of a Spanish port
and a stony Irish town are the backdrop for a story of misdeeds,
madness and loss that swells with poetry and pathos
*BOOKER PRIZE JUDGES 2019*
Loved this! Made me nostalgic for people I've never met, places
I've never been. Life distilled
*GRAHAM NORTON*
Kevin Barry is still young, but in this novel he has found a deep
and aged maturity; all the recognisable Barry phraseology and wit
is still there, but there's also now a lovely melancholic kindness.
Perhaps even a sentimentality, in the best sense of that word.
Kevin Barry loves you; the least you can do is read this wonder of
a novel
*JON McGREGOR*
In this latest novel, the Irish writer has almost invented a new
genre, a fascinating hybrid of poetry, prose and drama . . .
Mesmeric, exquisite . . . Night Boat to Tangier draws on the
terrific vernacular energy in Irish English that is animating the
best of Irish writing at present . . . This is a remarkably
achieved novel which shows a writer in full command of the
possibilities of the form
* * Irish Times * *
Lyrical, elegiac, taut and strange
*IAN RANKIN*
Barry tells his grim story in Beckettian flashes of poetry . . .
The relationship between Maurice and Charlie drives this often
hilarious novel
* * The Times * *
Lines that make me want to punch the air like I'm singing the final
song from an 80s power ballad . . . Night Boat to Tangier suggests
the past comes in waves, relentlessly, always different and yet
always the same, and all we can put against it are the shifting
sands of our present self
* * Herald * *
Infused with a uniquely Irish mixture of melancholy and myth, and
written in a prose rich with the cadences of poetry, Barry's fifth
work of fiction is witty, gritty and wise; it offers a sense of
what it means to be fallible, to be human and to love. Sublime
* * Irish Mail on Sunday * *
Kevin Barry is one of the most original, daring, and seriously
funny writers ever to come out of Ireland. I'd walk a hundred miles
for a new Barry book and I would make the happy journey home,
laughing
*COLUM McCANN*
Stunning. One of the most affecting love stories I have ever come
across
*MIKE McCORMACK*
A bloody mighty novel. It's audacious, but also it's Kevin Barry at
his most tender. The novel carries a beautiful, mournful undertow
to it, which is particularly affecting in a book so heavy with old
myth and new poetry. May he keep twisting literature forever
*LISA McINERNEY*
Barry writes with real exuberance
* * Sunday Times * *
Barry's prose, which melds violence, profane comedy and tender
lyricism, will be warmly embraced by those who read and loved the
dystopian nightmare that was City of Bohane, his breakthrough book.
Newcomers will, I'm sure, relish getting swept up in Barry's
twisted universe for the first time
* * Spectator, best summer reads for 2019 * *
There's plenty of sex, drugs, death and magic in Night Boat to
Tangier, but above all it is a biting, black comedy of manners,
driven by the profane dance of gangster etiquette
*COLIN BARRETT*
Barry's ear for dialogue remains tip-top
* * Daily Mail * *
Thrilling
* * Daily Telegraph * *
Haunting . . . A sharply comic meditation on male friendship and
the true cost of crime on the soul
* * i, best books of 2019 * *
The gods of literature, who have so much love for Ireland, are
sweet on Kevin Barry
*RICHARD BEARD*
Kevin Barry is one of the best. The essence of humanity and its
many facets is buried deep in his bones, ready to be unearthed and
exhibited in signature Barry style
* * Irish Examiner * *
One of the most abundantly talented novelists writing today
* * Daily Telegraph * *
Buoyant . . . Barry is such a deft and generous writer
* * New York Times * *
Utterly compelling . . . Reading him, I am given the feeling that
I've achieved something, done something good and am being justly
remunerated. The brain lights up and grins
* * Spectator * *
Kevin Barry's way with language is unique. The spring and bounce of
it. The dark poetry. The cheek. And then there's the sheer joyful
recklessness of his imagination. There's really no one to rival
him
*RUPERT THOMSON*
Excellent
*DAVID NICHOLLS*
Heir to Beckett and O'Brien . . . Barry is a truly astonishing
writer . . . Although the sheer bravado of the prose is a marvel,
page after page, it is the emotive core behind it all which makes
it remarkable
* * Scotland on Sunday * *
Barry, arch-divil of Irish literature and a feverishly unique
mangler of the English language, is back with a third novel . . .
The Barry brew of mayhem, violence and tenderness is still
undeniably potent. He is out on his own in the broad scheme of
things, and so much here reminds you of why this is so and what he
can do when airborne
* * Irish Independent * *
Briskly told, in short paragraphs, with a dark wit and deftly
managed suspense
* * Literary Review * *
Vivid
* * New Statesman * *
Heartfelt yet darkly hilarious and simmering with menace, written
with the kind of earthy lyricism only Kevin Barry can pull off - I
loved it
*PAUL HOWARTH*
It is an understatement to say that nobody writes quite like Kevin
Barry; in truth, there's nobody else in the same phylum. In Night
Boat to Tangier you'll find all the Barry hallmarks - that
inimitable style of his, both riotous and lyrical, the sly humour,
and his seemingly effortless ability to create characters who
spring to glorious life within a few short pages. I imagine you'll
love this book just as I did, and wish, if anything, that you could
spend just a little more time in the world Barry conjures
*CRAIG DAVIDSON*
Among the next generation of writers - Zadie Smith, Michael Chabon,
Jonathan Safran Foer and so on - the one that stands above the rest
for ambition, language and sheer verve is Barry . . . If you
haven't heard of him yet, you soon will. I'd wager he'll wind up
with the Nobel Prize for Literature before he's done
* * Evening Standard * *
Entertaining . . . Kevin Barry channels the music in every voice,
from lowlife philosopher to slow-footed thug, ponderous wit to
fluting child - and the comic genius in everyone, whether unfunny
fool or God's own comedian
* * Washington Post * *
The work of a genuine artist: a writer who surprises and enlightens
with everything he does
* * Sunday Business Post * *
A desolate ferry terminal on the Spanish coast isn't a place where
you'd expect to encounter sharp-edged lyricism or rueful
philosophy, but thanks to the two Irish gangster antiheroes of
Barry's novel, there's plenty of both on display . . . Their banter
is a shield against the dark, a witty new take on Waiting for
Godot
* * New York Times, Books of the Year * *
The male codependents in his latest novel, Night Boat to Tangier,
are proudly reptilian. As they announce with indecent pride, they
wear excellent fucking shoes. Barry specialises in character
pairings - death-driven, addicted to each other - in a way
reminiscent of Beckett
* * London Review of Books * *
Deeply satisfying . . . Magical . . .Barry's narrative pacing
creates and then brilliantly settles the tensions between his
characters. For all readers of literary fiction
* * Library Journal * *
A darkly incantatory tragicomedy of love and betrayal, haunted
lineage and squandered chances . . . Beautifully paced, emotionally
wise. Spare in its prose, capacious in its understanding, it's as
eerily attuned as his last one, Beatlebone
* * Boston Globe * *
Full of foreboding and of ghosts, not least that of Samuel Beckett,
and is continuing proof of this writer's ability to pack more
personality and mordant wit into a single sentence than most
writers can manage in a novel
* * Literary Hub * *
You read this, and you can tell Barry doesn't take his sentences
lightly. It'd kill him to mess one up. And he doesn't waste them.
So what you get is his style's flawless, and yet it isn't soft.
There isn't anything nice about the story, just that it's told
beautifully
*NICO WALKER, author of CHERRY*
A meditation on love and crime, in which two elderly Irish
gangsters await their reckoning in Algeciras
* * i, Best Books of the Year * *
One of the most gifted fiction writers to emerge from the
English-speaking world in the new century
* * Paris Review * *
Impishly funny, shrewdly affecting, and pays elegant homage to a
long literary line. Barry grows in stature with every book
* * Big Issue, Books of the Year * *
Inventive
* * Big Issue, Books of the Year * *
The story of two Irish criminal biding their time in the Spanish
port city of Algeciras, is full of foreboding and of ghosts, not
least that of Samuel Beckett, and is continuing proof of this
writer's ability to pack more personality and mordant wit into a
single sentence than most writers can manage in a novel . . . By
far one of my favorite novels of the year
* * Literary Hub, Books of the Year * *
Barry has a knack for dialogue . . . Night Boat to Tangier is
remarkable, a novel that's both grim and compassionate, and it
features gorgeous writing on every page. Barry never asks the
reader to pity his characters; rather, he makes it nearly
impossible not to relate to them, which is a remarkable trick
*NPR*
A writer of inspired prose, a funny and perceptive artist who can
imbue a small story with tremendous depth . . . Night Boat to
Tangier is a sad, lyrical beauty of a novel about regret, from a
dependably entertaining and perceptive writer
* * Star Tribune * *
The pleasure to be found in this relatively short book is in the
telling, plus the author's clear evocative prose that often deploys
lines and paragraphs that suggest music but it's not the speedy
pace of step dancing. Rather it is the sad, slow, and beautiful
music of time
* * Washington Times * *
A bone fide Kevin Barry - it's very funny and very beautifully
composed. . It's social realism, psychological realism, but with
Barry's pointed wit, stupendous dialogue, and unerring
tenderness
*Bookmunch*
Barry is a writer of the first rate, and his prose is at turns lean
and lyrical, but always precise
* * Publishers Weekly * *
Booze-soaked and lovelorn . . . with beat-perfect dialogue and the
diamond-grade schlock of an HBO script . . . [with] a thousand
wicked turns of phrase . . . Night Boat to Tangier is a darkly
heady mood, thick enough and sweet enough to drink
* * The List * *
Beautifully written . . . Skilful
* * Forbes * *
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