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Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated by Lin King has won the 2024 National Book Award for Translated Literature!!! Buy now

Book Title

Dark Lies the Island

Subtitle
Stories
Author 1
Kevin Barry
Body
Kevin Barry’s deliciously wicked collection Dark Lies the Island delivers on the many reckless promises made by his virtuosic and prizewinning debut novel, City of Bohane. It firmly establishes him as both a world-class word slinger and a masterful storyteller.
 
“[Kevin Barry] isn’t sparing with his powers. Even his throwaway lines are keepers.”—The New York Times
 
“He does humor. He does high drama. He even dabbles in horror (of a kind). And he can handle just about any other narrative form you might think of.”––Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
 
“Barry’s best short stories are like a spade to the face. . . . [He] earns comparison with the great and shamefully neglected VS Pritchett, whose short stories also employed pronounced comic means for serious, compassionate ends.” ––The Guardian

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List Price
$17.00
ISBN
ISBN
978-1-55597-688-0
Format
Format
Paperback
Publication Date
Publication Date
Subject
Subject
Pages
Pages
192
Trim Size
Trim Size
5.5 x 8.25
Keynote
“Outstanding . . . . [These] stories triumph. . . . They are funny, sad, troubling, illuminating, often in equal measure.”––Financial Times

About the Author

Kevin  Barry
Credit: Hugh O'Conor
Kevin Barry is the author of Dark Lies the Island,City of Bohane, which received the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and the story collection There Are Little Kingdoms. He has won  the Sunday Times Short Story Award, the European Union Prize for Literature, and the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award, and was short-listed for the Costa First Novel Award and the Frank O’Connor International Story Award. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker and Tin House, among other places. He lives in County Sligo, Ireland.
 
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Praise

  • “What makes this book such a satisfying read is that [Barry’s] memorable sentence-writing is in the service of well-constructed, moving stories.”The New York Times
  • “[Dark Lies the Island] reveals the menace of everyday life. . . . [Barry’s] regard for characters big and small and capacity to be funny without playing them for cheap laughs recalls George Saunders.”—The New York Times Book Review
  • “Barry is a prose wizard whose stories pulse on the page with all the humor and viciousness of life itself.”—Sam Lipsyte, The Millions
  • “If City of Bohane earned Barry a modicum of global literary stardom . . . this collection leaves no doubt that he’s earned all that’s come his way. Deeply humane and immensely funny, Dark Lies the Island is another testament to his many talents.”—Star Tribune(Minneapolis)
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