Night Boat to Tangier cover art

Night Boat to Tangier

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Night Boat to Tangier

By: Kevin Barry
Narrated by: Kevin Barry
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About this listen


Gloriously freewheeling – Guardian

It's a Kevin Barry novel, so the brilliance is expected; everything else is a brilliant surprise – Roddy Doyle

The gods of literature, who have so much love for Ireland, are sweet on Kevin Barry – Richard Beard

It's late one night at the Spanish port of Algeciras and two fading Irish gangsters are waiting on the boat from Tangier. A lover has been lost, a daughter has gone missing, their world has come asunder - can it be put together again?

Night Boat to Tangier is a novel drenched in sex and death and narcotics, in sudden violence and old magic, but it is obsessed, above all, with the mysteries of love. A tragicomic masterwork from a multi-award-winning writer, Night Boat to Tangier is both mordant and hilarious, lyrical yet laden with menace.
©2019 Kevin Barry (P)2019 Canongate Books Ltd
Dark Humour Genre Fiction Literature & Fiction Urban Fiction Ireland Witty Heartfelt Thought-Provoking

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Critic reviews

“Barry is a marvel: menacing, insistent, switching from brooding descriptions of the men’s nocturnal surroundings to their terse dialogue. The conviction with which he explores their search for Charlie’s missing daughter never fails.” (Financial Times, Audiobooks)

"A true wonder." (Max Porter)

What listeners say about Night Boat to Tangier

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Better read than listen

Switched between reading and listening and I have to say the reader ruined it for me. the pacing was wrong and the prosody sometimes hysterical. good story. probably shouldn't win the Booker. definite influences from Beckett (Godot) and some brilliant single lines ("there wasn't a sparrow safe for miles"). Barry has a brilliant comic sense. But, it is not matched by his darkness.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

The port of UHOA!

I should have read this rather than listened.
Enjoyed the story, the sentiment and the flowery blarney.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Utterly brilliant

Fantastic pleasure to read!
Must listen to again and then again!
Such characters, such writing, such enjoyment!

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

A Thing of Rare Beauty

There have been mixed opinions regarding the narration of this novel with some taking against the style of the author's narration. I have to say I really enjoyed his voice. I listened with headphones and felt a deep connection with the lyrical lilt of the Cork accents. Many have compared the writing to Beckett and Joyce and I appreciate these comparisons. What I most enjoyed was the two old gangsters joining forces, after a mixed life of crime, on a doomed mission and their sense of time lost and time passing. I also loved the female perspectives and would have liked more of their insights. Descriptions of landscape are gorgeous and tremendously evocative. All in all I found this a truly engaging and moving novel. As I've said, I enjoyed the narration but if you are one of the few who don't then I'd urge you to read it in book form so as not to deny yourself the rich and rewarding pleasures of the novel.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Whispering ruins it

I found it very annoying that the author read it out whispering all the way through. Good book but it spoiled the experience.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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superlative, perfect in all parts

mesmeric, perfectly freighted, weighted and narrated. Genuinely faultless and perfect for audio instead of text

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Get this book

What a story. Well read by the author but even more beautifully written by the man. Loved this

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Brilliant at time... Boring at others

A very imbalanced book. Brilliant moments with flat voiced reading and excessive time jumps.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Brilliant reads. Better listens.

Uniquely haunting and hilarious and perfectly performed by the author. My favourite audiobooks by an Irish country mile.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

terrible ending

was the ending cut out or did it really just stop like that? I would have liked it a lot more if it had SOME kind of ending.

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