Night Boat to Tangier
Kevin Barry
Available as Paperback, eBook, Downloadable audio
The Booker-longlisted novel, drenched in sex, death and narcotics, in sudden violence, old magic and the mysteries of love, from the winner of the IMPAC Award and the Goldsmiths Prize
LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE
IRISH TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER
SHORTLISTED FOR NOVEL OF THE YEAR AT THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS, THE DALKEY LITERARY AWARDS AND THE KERRY GROUP AWARDS
A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE NEW YORK TIMES, NEW STATESMAN, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT, BIG ISSUE, i, THE ATLANTIC and LITERARY HUB
‘A true wonder’ Max Porter
‘Beautifully written’ Guardian
It’s late one night at the Spanish port of Algeciras and two fading Irish gangsters are waiting on the boat from Tangier. A lover has been lost, a daughter has gone missing, their world has come asunder – can it be put together again?
“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”
Alan Warner
guardian
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“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
Kevin Barry
Kevin Barry is the author of the novels Beatlebone and City of Bohane and the story collections Dark Lies the Island and There Are Little Kingdoms. His awards include the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Prize and the Lannan Foundation Literary Award. His stories and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, Granta and elsewhere. He also works as a playwright and screenwriter, and he lives in County Sligo, Ireland. Night Boat to Tangier was an Irish number one bestseller, was longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards.
‘Would you say there’s any end in sight, Charlie?’ Two fading Irish gangsters are waiting on the boat from Tangier. A lover has been lost, a daughter has gone missing… The Booker-longlisted Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry is out now in paperback.
Night Boat to Tangier – one of the New York Times’ ten best books of the year
“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, along with scabrously amusing tale-telling and much summoning of painful memories.”
Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry has been named one of the ten best books of 2019 by the New York Times.
5 questions for Kevin Barry
“Annie Dillard said once that the only advice any writer needs is to keep your overheads low. In our present epoch, this means you have to be very, very careful about where you choose to live. I live cheaply in the rural north west of Ireland and this means I don’t have to teach, I can just write. The city as an entity really doesn’t want anything to do with writers anymore—we’ve been priced out, as have all creative people except those from backgrounds of privilege. So screw the city—it’s the city’s loss.”
Kevin Barry, author of Night Boat to Tangier, answers five questions on writing and its obstacles over at Literary Hub.
Literary Hub
The Financial Times have been enjoying the audiobook of Night Boat to Tangier read by Kevin Barry himself:
“Barry is a marvel: menacing, insistent, switching from brooding descriptions of the men’s nocturnal surroundings to their terse dialogue. The conviction with which he explores their search for Charlie’s missing daughter never fails.”
Financial Times
“Barry, winner of the Impac Dublin literary award for City of Bohane and the Goldsmiths prize for Beatlebone, is a clairvoyant narrator of the male psyche and a consistent lyrical visionary. The prose is a caress, rolling out in swift, spaced paragraphs, a telegraphese of fleeting consciousness…”
Alan Warner reviews Night Boat to Tangier in the Guardian.