Limerick and Tipperary face off in tomorrow’s Munster senior hurling final. You know that. But the conflict is not confined to the Gaelic Grounds. Michael Moynihan evaluates a quality fiction/hurling stand-off between Limerick’s Kevin Barry and Tipperary’s Donal Ryan.

Kevin Barry’s book combines everything from Portugese architecture to Traveller cant, he tells Richard Fitzpatrick

Biography

KEVIN BARRY’S new novel about a futuristic west of Ireland ruled by violence and fear, ‘City of Bohane’, is drawing superlatives like a magnet attracts iron filings, and the genial Limerick native doesn’t hold back when it comes to his own interest in sport.