Night Boat to Tangier

Review "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 "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 "I had to quit reading this book the first day I had it in my hands, just so I could have it to read the next day. It's that good" -- RICHARD FORD "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" -- Kate Saunders ― 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 shi