I just heard that Kevin Barry’s City of Bohane won the 2013 International Dublin Literary Impac Award. I set out to read the entire shortlist of 10, but never quite got there. I abandoned two, completed six, and never got round to reading the remaining two.

City of Bohane was my favourite. It took me way outside my comfort zone, and I entered a world I never would otherwise have considered. It requires effort from the reader, at least initially. As Barry himself states, if we are willing to tackle the patois of The Wire, so too we might make the effort to enter the world of Bohane…

And it is absolutely worth it. A magical and transformative book, City of Bohane surprised, seduced and transported me.

CQ