Paddy Clarke is ten years old. Paddy Clarke lights fires. Paddy Clarke's name is written in wet cement all over Barrytown, north Dublin. Paddy Clarke's heroes are Father Damien (and the lepers), Geronimo and George Best. Paddy Clarke has a brother called Francis, but Paddy calls him Sinbad and hates him because that's the rule. Paddy Clarke knows the exact moment to knock a dead scab from his knee. Paddy Clarke loves his Ma and Da, but it seems like they don't love each other, and Paddy's ...

A Greyhound of a Girl by Roddy Doyle is a touching story about love, family, and the power of memories. This book is a celebration of life, legacy, and the unbreakable ties that bind us to those we cherish.Named a Best Book of the 21st Century (So Far) by KirkusThis heartwarming and poignant tale spans four generations of women in an Irish family. Twelve-year-old Mary O'Hara is a spirited Dublin schoolgirl who is bravely f...

This eclectic, funny, and moving book tracks a life lived in music and words. Paul Quarrington ruminates on the bands of his childhood; his restless youth, spent playing bass with the cult band Joe Hall and the Continental Drift; and his incarnation, in middle age, as rhythm guitarist and singer with the band Porkbelly Futures.Ranging through rock ’n’ roll, the blues, folk, country and soul, he explores how songs are made, how they work, and why they affect us so d...

Meet Charlie Savage.Charlie is a middle-aged Dubliner with an indefatigable wife, an exasperated daughter, a drinking buddy who’s realised that he’s been a woman all along …Compiled here for the first time is a whole year’s worth of Roddy Doyle’s hilarious series for the Irish Independent. Giving a unique voice to the everyday, he draws a portrait of a man – funny, loyal, somewhat bewildered – trying to keep pace with the modern world (if his knees don’t give out f...

Short, sometimes sweet and often strange, here are seven great stories by some of the best writers from around the world...Anne EnrightYoko OgawaDavid SzalayNadifa MohamedAndrey KurkovYael van der Woudenand Roddy DoyleThe Booker Prizes celebrate the world’s best fiction. In this book, Roddy Doyle, who won in 1993, has chosen a range of brilliant stories written by other winners and nominees. Discover short stories t...

Barrytown, Dublin, has something to sing about. The Commitments are spreading the gospel of the soul. Ably managed by Jimmy Rabitte, brilliantly coached by Joel 'The Lips' Fagan, their twin assault on Motown and Barrytown takes them by leaps and bounds from Paris Hall to immortality on vinyl. But can The Commitments live up to their name?

This volume brings together under one cover Roddy Doyle's three acclaimed novels about the Rabbite family from Dublin. The Commitments traces the rapid rise and even more rapid fall of Jimmy Rabbite Jr's unusual soul band. In The Snapper, Sharon Rabbite's pregnancy sparks off intense speculation among her friends and family, but she is determined to reveal the identity of the father in her own time. The Van, set during Ireland's 1990 World Cup attempt, follows th...

Two old friends reconnect in Dublin for a dramatic, revealing evening of confidences--some planned, some spontaneous--in this captivating new book from the author of the Booker Prize-winning Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.Old friends meet up on a summer's evening at a Dublin restaurant. Both are now married with grown-up children, and their lives have taken seemingly similar paths. But Joe has a secret he has to tell Davy, and Davy, a grief he wants to keep from Jo...

Jimmy Rabbitte is back.The man who invented the Commitments back in the eighties is now forty-seven, with a loving wife, four kids ... and bowel cancer. He isn't dying, he thinks, but he might be.Jimmy still loves his music, and he still loves to hustle - his new thing is finding old bands and then finding the people who loved them enough to pay money for their resurrected singles and albums. On his path through Dublin he meets two of the Commitments - Outspan, whose own il...

Bisi Adigun and Roddy Doyle’s centenary adaption of J. M. Synge’s classic The Playboy of the Western World had a sold-out run when it was produced at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre in 2007 and was brought back by popular demand in 2008. The new version is set in a contemporary Dublin pub and features the character of a Nigerian asylum-seeker in the lead role. Under the coauthorship of Bisi Adigun, artistic director of Arambe Productions—Ireland’s first African theater company—and best-sel...

Bisi Adigun and Roddy Doyle’s centenary adaption of J. M. Synge’s classic The Playboy of the Western World had a sold-out run when it was produced at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre in 2007 and was brought back by popular demand in 2008. The new version is set in a contemporary Dublin pub and features the character of a Nigerian asylum-seeker in the lead role. Under the coauthorship of Bisi Adigun, artistic director of Arambe Productions—Ireland’s first African theater company—and best-sel...

Tá Danny Ó Murchú ag dul le bualadh lena dheartháir Jimmy. Ní fhaca siad a chéile le níos mó ná fiche bliain. Ar an mbealach chuig an gcruinniú, is cuimhin le Danny na tréimhsí maithe agus na drochthréimhsí, an spraoi agus na troideanna – agus an t-achrann mór amháin a scar iad. An dtroidfidh siad arís nó an mbeidh siad ina gcairde mar ba ghnáth leo a bheith? Níl a fhios ag Danny.Danny Murphy is going to meet his brother, Jimmy. They haven't seen each other in over twenty years. On...