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City of Bohane: A Novel

by Kevin Barry

"When you read City of Bohane, don’t expect to know what’s going on for the first twenty pages. Don’t give up! The vernacular of Bohane’s inhabitants begins to make sense if you stick with it. This is Ireland in the future, Gangs of New York in the 2050s. A gang called the Fancy rules the streets of this futuristic city. Particularly wonderful are the descriptions of the Alexander McQueen-esque outfits that the Fancy wear. There’s a love story in there and some major violence between gangs and Barry’s lyrical language makes it all seem so alive."

Megan S.

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Author Kevin Barry
Publisher Graywolf Press
Publication Date 2012-03-13
Section New Hc - Fiction / Staff Recs / All Staff Suggestions / Megan S.

Type New
Format Hardcover
ISBN 9781555976088

* 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.

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