A new short story by Booker Prize winning author Roddy Doyle is to be published exclusively in Metro Éireann from 15 December.
Doyle – whose latest book The Guts this week won the Novel of the Year award at the recent Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards – has been writing short stories for Metro Éireann since 2000.
Doyle’s sometimes very funny, often poignant stories deal with the mix of immigrant experiences in modern Ireland as it struggles with an identity crisis in the post-Celtic Tiger era.
Some of his tales were published as The Deportees and Other Stories in 2007. And his more recent stories include Celebrity Manager, about a loner who gets involved with a local intercultural Gaelic football team, and Sham, a satirical take on so-called ‘sham’ marriages.
Doyle tells Metro Éireann his new short is called Brown-Eyed Boy and it “will be inspired by a recent event in Ireland”.
Brown-Eyed Boy will be published monthly, with the first chapter appearing in the next edition of Metro Éireann on sale 15 December.
One of Ireland’s leading authors, Roddy Doyle has written over a dozen novels for adults – including 1993 Booker winner Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha – and several books for children, plus dozens of short stories, and is also dramatist and screenwriter.
Doyle’s works are renowned for their extraordinary wit and portrayal of contemporary Irish life, particularly in north Dublin where he grew up and still lives today.
His most famous novel The Commitments was made into a hit Hollywood movie in 1991 – winning a Bafta for Doyle for best adapted screenplay – and a successful stage musical version is currently running in London’s West End.
Doyle is also involved in the training of young writers, teaming with Sean Love in 2009 to establish Fighting Words, a Dublin-based centre that provides free tutoring for school-age children in creative writing.
