Meet Pat McNab, forty-five years old, often to be found endlessly puffing smokes and propping up the counter of Sullivan's Select Bar or sitting on his mother's knee, both of them singing away together like some ridiculous two-headed human juke box. But that was all before the story really begins. Emerald Germs of Ireland is, in essence, Pat McNab's post-matricide year. This is another great romp from the master of black comedy.

Patrick McCabe was born in Clones, County Monaghan, Ireland in 1955. He is the author of the children's story The Adventures of Shay Mouse, and the novels Music on Clinton Street, Carn, The Butcher Boy (winner of the Irish Times/Aer Lingus Literature Prize and shortlisted for the 1992 Booker Prize), The Dead School, Breakfast on Pluto (shortlisted for the 1998 Booker Prize), Mondo Desperando, Emerald Germs of Ireland and Call Me The Breeze. He lives in Sligo with his wife and two daughters.