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City of Bohane

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What to expect

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.

Critics Review

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

User Reviews

Book 2.0
Narration 2.0
Author Kevin Barry
Narrator Kevin Barry
Duration 8 hours and 39 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781448156627
Format Audiobook
Publisher Random House
Genre Fantasy, Modern and contemporary fiction
Availability GB, IE, US
Rating
2.0 (1 review)
Narration
2.0 (1 review)

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