CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED AUTHOR: Smile earned some of Roddy’s best ever reviews citing his inventiveness and courage in new types of storytelling.

A MASTERPIECE? Roddy’s longtime UK editor, Dan Franklin, has said this may be the masterpiece of Roddy’s later period, and one of the great novels of Dublin. You be the judge.

IRISH WRITERS ARE SO HOT RIGHT NOW: With Sally Rooney, Kevin Barry and Anakana Schofield on the KC list, we have the modern Irish writers sewn up!

SPEAKING TOUR: A live tour celebrating the prolific career of one of Ireland’s best-loved writers, “Conversations with Roddy Doyle” will tour across the UK and Ireland in 2020 and will see Roddy discuss his work in an intimate and entertaining evening of sprawling conversation, with various special guest interviewers.

RODDY’S ACTIVISM: It’s been 10 years since Roddy started the first Fighting Words creative writing centre for young people in Dublin. Now there are 10 locations across Ireland and more underway. He avidly reads and vigorously supports and blurbs the next generations of voices in Ireland.

PAPERBACK ORIGINAL FORMAT

RODDY DOYLE was born in Dublin in 1958. He is the author of eleven acclaimed novels including The Commitments, The Snapper, The Van and Smile; four collections of short stories; and Rory & Ita, a memoir about his parents. He won the Booker Prize in 1993 for Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. He wrote the original screenplay for the critically acclaimed 2018 film, Rosie.

Author Residence: Clontarf, Dublin, Ireland

Author Hometown: Dalkey, Ireland

Praise for Love:
“[H]ilarity and seriousness work back to back to illuminate the secret, sacred world of male friendship that lies behind all the awkwardness and evasiveness.” The New York Times

“Roddy Doyle’s new novel. Love, is his finest to date…. [Q]uietly remarkable and deeply subtle. Yes, it’s just two men meeting in a pub over pints, but it breaks your heart.” Irish Central

“Amid the intimate stories he tells, Doyle has chronicled the evolution of modern Ireland and Irish identity over the past few decades. As always, beneath the zing of his prose beats a warm heart…. Doyle is justly renowned for his whip-smart dialogue, which combines salty humour and the loving use of local vernacular (and helps his writing transfer easily and entertainingly from page to screen and stage)…. Sometimes the effect is comic; more often it is moving…. And there is beauty and compassion in Doyle’s sculpted, spare writing. Among all the banter and gags he manages to articulate feelings that are rarely expressed so fittingly. Whether it is describing the agonising death of an elderly parent, or evoking the euphoria of an unlikely late-life passion, Love is a reminder that its author is one to treasure.” The Financial Times

“Love is as much a love letter to pubs as it is an exploration of the emotion itself…. Masculinity, becoming a man, what it means to be a man are all touched on in this book…. [D]uring a time when there’s so much talk about toxic masculinity the manliness Doyle expresses, even in Love, seems to be a gentler kind.” Toronto Star

"Love is a treasure of working-class dialogue — authentic, funny and moving.... Ireland’s Roddy Doyle, a master of Irish-English ve“[H]ilarity and seriousness work back to back to illuminate the secret, sacred world of male friendship that lies behind all the awkwardness and evasiveness.” —The New York Times rnacular, delightfully displays this talent in a new novel that takes place almost entirely in Dublin beverage rooms. The book could easily be entitled Pubs.... Love perfectly captures two late-middle-aged friends who try, in a leisurely beer-drinking marathon, to sort out what love means to them." Winnipeg Free Press

“When this novel is funny, it’s seriously funny . . . There’s a lot of Joyce in this novel—not the layered density of Ulysses or Finnegans Wake, but the layered simplicity of Dubliners, in the straightforward yet incantatory sentences, and in the loading of simple words.” The New York Times


"Both elegiac and hilarious." The Washington Post

"A profound examination of friendship, romantic confusion and mortality." John Boyne

"Witty, satisfying.... By closing time, Doyle has focused the novel’s rambling energy into an elegiac and sobering climax. This one is a winner." Publishers Weekly

"At the end of this long night's journey into day, we are buoyed against the sadness by what is finally a portrait of love in the face of life." Booklist

“Oh, Roddy Doyle, you had me at the cover art…. Doyle, author of the Booker Prize-winning Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, is one of Ireland’s wittiest and greatest writers, so even if his latest book had a brown paper bag for a cover, I’d buy it. Put a pint of Guinness on the cover with the title Love writ large and, well, you’ve touched a wellspring of memories before I reach page one…. Even after a night of Guinness, life remains daunting. It is less so with Roddy Doyle as our guide.” Fredricksburg Free Lance–Star


Praise for Roddy Doyle:

"The best novelist of his generation." LITERARY REVIEW

"Roddy Doyle has become an explorer of the deepest places of the heart, of love and pain and loss." THE IRISH TIMES

"His novels fizz with demotic zing, comic phrasing and the back-and-forth of Irish chat." THE TIMES

"Doyle is one of the best writers of dialogue we have, using it with humour and drama." NEW STATESMAN

"Doyle has a kind of genius for the literary selfie, for projecting himself and his generation onto the page." EVENING STANDARD