Kevin BARRY

The author offers readers an opulent feast: not only picturesque characters and an intriguing environment but especially the language. His rhythmic prose using countless language layers, from the vernacular, vulgarisms to newly created words, is a page-turner. It is as thrilling as looking at the fast stream of the Bohane River flowing through the town of the same name, thanks to Alena Dvořáková’s excellent translation. And that it is not just any town. Populated by distinctive characters, such as Logan Hartnett, alias the Albino, alias the Long Fella, who rules the Hartnett Fancy gang, which has (almost) the entire city under control, Jenni Qing, his cool seventeen-year-old partner, or the elegant but murderously dangerous Fucker Burke.

Published by Argo, 2016

Kevin Barry (* 1969) was born in Limerick, but he lived in many places – in Cork, Santa Barbara, Barcelona, Liverpool; in the end, he was tired of moving his entire library from place to place and settled in the northwest of Ireland in the picturesque town of Sligo. He started as a columnist in the Irish Examiner, making his book debut in 2007. So far, two of his books have been published in Czech – the novels City of Bohane (U nás v Bohane, 2016) and Beatlebone (Broukobol, 2018).