Patrick McCabe

Ellen McWilliams (University of Exeter)

Ed. by Ian Campbell Ross, Trinity College Dublin
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.4: Irish Writing and Culture, 400-present.
Vol. editors: Anne Markey (Dublin City University), Ian Campbell Ross (Trinity College Dublin), Eoghan Smith (Carlow College), Sinéad Sturgeon (Queen's University Belfast)

Dates

Born 27 Mar 1955
Activity 1992-ongoing

Places

Born in Ireland, Republic of (Eire)
Active in Ireland, Republic of (Eire); United Kingdom

Activities

Primary

Novelist

Resources

McCabe's Works

Save to Bookshelf

Patrick McCabe is one of the most important Irish novelists of his generation. Born in Clones, Co. Monaghan in 1955, he has written eight novels, several plays, screenplays for film and television, and a children's book,

The Adventures of Shay Mouse: The Mouse from Longford

(1985). He has received several prestigious Irish literary awards, and has been twice shortlisted for the Booker prize for his novels

The Butcher Boy

(1992) and

Breakfast on Pluto

(1998). McCabe's fiction explores the history of post-independence Ireland and engages dramatically with Irish politics and society in the mid-to-late twentieth century. All of McCabe's novels have a dark, gothic aspect, and his work is characterized by distinctive black comic elements. His protagonists are, more often than not, outsiders –…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2338 words

Citation: McWilliams, Ellen. "Patrick McCabe". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 December 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5063, accessed 23 November 2024.]

View recommended reading for this article