Kevin Barry
Irish writer Kevin Barry made his debut in 2011 with City of Bohane, a visionary novel set in 2053 that follows a vivid cast of characters trying to survive in a paranoid, malicious, gang-infested world. By 2013, he was already established as an original and imaginative storyteller and the book was awarded one of the most important literary honors worldwide, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, distinguished by its unique nomination process that involves libraries from cities across the globe. Barry has since received numerous accolades for his diverse body of work that includes four novels, three collections of short stories, plays, screenplays, and essays. One of his most popular works, his 2019 Night Boat to Tangier, is an existential noir brimming with witty banter, cynical self-deprecation and a devilish sense of humor. The book pierces skillfully through layers of melancholy and lunacy to get to the center of the Irish male psyche, while pointedly critiquing the dangerous games at the heart of the so-called “Irish economic miracle” that inevitably led to the collapse of Ireland’s fake prosperity. His recent book, The Heart in Winter, published in 2024, is a more laconic novel set in Montana, USA, in the 19th century, a time when European immigrants were ruthlessly exploited to build the future industrial hubs of the American West. This provides the background for a powerful romance between an Irish pariah and a much younger married woman who run away together, embarking on a quest that, for all its allusions to the western, unfolds with all the thematic and aesthetic complexity, not to mention the acerbic humor, of a quintessentially Irish novel.
