Roddy Doyle

 

Roddy Doyle

Born:	May 8 1958 (1958--) (age 49) Kilbarrack, Dublin, Ireland
Occupation:	Novelist and Dramatist

Roddy Doyle (Irish: Ruaidhrí Ó Dúill, born May 8, 1958 in Dublin) is an Irish novelist, dramatist and screenwriter. Several of his books have been made into successful films, beginning with The Commitments in 1991. He won the Booker Prize in 1993.

Doyle grew up in Kilbarrack, Dublin. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from University College, Dublin. He spent several years as an English and geography teacher before becoming a full-time writer in 1993.

Bibliography

Novels

• The Barrytown Trilogy:
  • The Commitments (1987, film 1991) — A group of Dublin teenagers, led by Jimmy Rabbitte Jr., decide to form a soul band in the tradition of James Brown.
  • The Snapper (1990, film 1993) — Jimmy's sister, Sharon, becomes pregnant. She is determined to have the child but refuses to reveal the father's identity to her family.
  • The Van (1991, shortlisted for the 1991 Booker Prize, film 1997) — Jimmy Sr. is laid off, as is his friend Bimbo. Bimbo buys a used fish and chips van and the two go into business for themselves.

• Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (1993, winner of the 1993 Booker Prize) — The world as described, understood and misunderstood by a ten-year-old Dubliner.
• The Woman Who Walked Into Doors (1996) — a story of a battered wife, narrated by the victim; despite her husband's increasingly violent behaviour, she defends him, using the classic excuse "I walked into a door" to explain her bruises.
• The Last Roundup:
  • A Star Called Henry (1999) — The story of Henry Smart from his childhood till early twenties.
  • Oh, Play That Thing! (2004) — Henry Smart's adventure into United States.
• Paula Spencer (2006) — Ten years after The Woman Who Walked into Doors, its protagonist returns.

Short stories

• "The Slave" — Terry is middle aged, reads Cold Mountain and obsesses over a dead rat.
• "Home to Harlem" A quarter black Irish student researches his paper idea in Harlem and looks for relatives. [McSweeney's] Quarterly Concern #16.

• "Teaching" — reflections of spent, alcoholic teacher. New Yorker, April 2, 2007.

• "Black Hoodie" — three students conduct an experiment on racial profiling by store security. McSweeney's Quarterly Concern #23, May 2007.

• A collection of short stories, The Deportees, will be published in early 2008.

Non-fiction

• Rory and Ita — about Doyle's parents

Theatre

• Brown Bread (1987)
• War (1989)
• The Woman who Walked into Doors (2003)

Television screenplay

• Family (1994) — BBC serial which was the forerunner of the 1996 novel The Woman Who Walked Into Doors.

Screenplays

• When Brendan Met Trudy (2000) — An amusing, light-hearted tale of romance between a timid schoolteacher (Brendan) and a spunky thief (Trudy).

Children's books

• The Giggler Treatment
• Rover Saves Christmas
• The Meanwhile Adventures

Research work about the author

• An Indecency Decently Put: Roddy Doyle and Contemporary Irish Fiction, by Niall McArdle (M.A. thesis, 1994, University College, Dublin)
• La réécriture de l'histoire dans les Romans de Roddy Doyle, Dermot Bolger et Patrick McCabe by Alain Mouchel-Vallon (PhD thesis, 2005, Reims University, France). [1]

External links

• Author page at Irish Writers Online
• Roddy Doyle: Author Biography Postcolonial Studies At Emory.
• Roddy Doyle's verdict on James Joyce's Ulysses
• The Salon Interview: Roddy Doyle
• Roddy Doyle At Fantastic Fiction
• Reviews of Paula Spencer (2006)

Man Booker Prize Winners for Fiction
1960-1969	P. H. Newby (1969)
1970-1979	Bernice Rubens (1970) • V. S. Naipaul (1971) • John Berger (1972) • James Gordon Farrell (1973) • Nadine Gordimer / Stanley Middleton (1974) • Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1975) • David Storey (1976) • Paul Scott (1977) • Iris Murdoch (1978) • Penelope Fitzgerald (1979)
1980-1989	William Golding (1980) • Salman Rushdie (1981) • Thomas Keneally (1982) • John Maxwell Coetzee (1983) • Anita Brookner (1984) • Keri Hulme (1985) • Kingsley Amis (1986) • Penelope Lively (1987) • Peter Carey (1988) • Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
1990-1999	A. S. Byatt (1990) • Ben Okri (1991) • Michael Ondaatje / Barry Unsworth (1992) • Roddy Doyle (1993) • James Kelman (1994) • Pat Barker (1995) • Graham Swift (1996) • Arundhati Roy (1997) • Ian McEwan (1998) • John Maxwell Coetzee (1999)
2000-2010	Margaret Atwood (2000) • Peter Carey (2001) • Yann Martel (2002) • DBC Pierre (2003) • Alan Hollinghurst (2004) • John Banville (2005) • Kiran Desai (2006) • Anne Enright (2007)

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