‘The Journey Home’ is the story of a young boy’s struggle towards maturity, set against a shocking portrait of Ireland: a tough urban landscape, not a rural Eden.

Francis Hanrahan, the shy child of grey suburban streets, is Francy at home to his country-born parents. But when he meets Shay, an older, wilder image of himself, he becomes Hano, and is cast out into the night-time world of Dublin – a world of drugs, all-night drinking sessions in bars and snooker halls, and the stench of political corruption.

‘A film-noir of a book, with a double murder at its core…excitingly and absorbingly told.’ Sunday Times

‘It is the best novel about Dublin since Joyce. Hano’s initiation into sleazy Dublin nightlife and Shay’s eventual tragic humiliation is conveyed with a compelling, even reckless, intensity.’ Irish Independent

‘Devastatingly forceful…Bolger is to Dublin what Dickens was to Victorian London: archivist, reporter, sometimes infuriated lover.’ Joseph O’Connor

Dermot Bolger was born in Dublin in 1959. His novels and plays have won many awards, in Ireland and internationally. He has also published several volumes of poetry. Bolger has been a notable and energetic champion of new Irish writers in his capacity as founder-publisher of Raven Arts Press, which he ran until 1992, whereafter he went on to start New Island Books. He is also the editor of the Picador Book of Contemporary Irish Writing, and editor of Finbar’s Hotel and Ladies’ Night at Finbar’s Hotel.