Patrick McCabe came to prominence with the publication of his third adult novel, The Butcher Boy, in 1992; the book was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in Britain and won the Irish Times-Aer Lingus Prize for fiction. McCabe’s strength as an author lies in his ability to probe behind the veneer of respectability and conformity to reveal the brutality and the cloying and corrupting stagnation of Irish small-town life, but he can find compassion for the subjects of his fiction. His prose has a vitality and an anti-authoritarian bent, using everyday language to deconstruct the ideologies at work in Ireland between the early 1960s and the late 1970s. His books can be read as a plea for a pluralistic Irish culture that can encompass the past without being dominated by it.
McCabe is an Irish writer of mostly dark and violent novels of contemporary, often small-town, Ireland. His novels include The Butcher Boy (1992) and Breakfast on Pluto (1998), both shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He has also written a children’s book (The Adventures of Shay Mouse) and several radio plays broadcast by the RTÉ and the BBC Radio 4. The Butcher Boy and Breakfast on Pluto have both been adapted into films by Irish director Neil Jordan.
McCabe lives in Clones, Co. Monaghan with his wife and two daughters.
Books in order of publication:
The Butcher Boy – 1992
Carn – 1993
The Dead School – 1995
Breakfast on Pluto – 1998
Mondo Desperado – 1999
Emerald Germs of Ireland – 2001
Call Me the Breeze – 2003
Winterwood – 2007
The Holy City – 2008
The Stray Sod Country – 2010
Hello Mr Bones – 2013
Hello and Goodbye – 2013
Heartland – 2018
The Big Yaroo – 2019
Poguemahone – 2021
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