Джеймс Патрик Донливи: Жизнь и творчество ирландского писателя.

Novelist, playwright, essayist

James Patrick Donleavy (23 April 1926 – 11 September 2017) was an American Irish novelist, short story writer and playwright. His best known work is the novel The Ginger Man, which was initially banned for obscenity.

Donleavy was born in Brooklyn, to Irish immigrants Margaret and Patrick Donleavy, and grew up in the Bronx. His father was a firefighter, and his mother came from a wealthy background. He had a sister, Mary Rita, and a younger brother. He received his education at various schools in the United States, then served in the US Navy during World War II. He gained critical acclaim with his first novel, The Ginger Man (1955), which is one of the Modern Library 100 best novels. The novel, of which Donleavy's friend and fellow writer Brendan Behan was the first person to read the completed manuscript,

Correctly or incorrectly, his initial works are sometimes grouped with the kitchen sink artists as well as the "Angry Young Men". Another novel, A Fairy Tale of New York, provided the title of the song "Fairytale of New York". In March 2007, Donleavy was the castaway on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs. In 2015, Donleavy was the recipient of the Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award at the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards. In 2016, Trinity College Dublin awarded him with an honorary doctorate.

Donleavy declared himself to be an atheist at the age of 14. In 1946, he married Valerie Heron; the couple had two children: Philip (born 1951) and Karen (born 1955). They divorced in 1969 and he remarried in 1970 to Mary Wilson Price; that union ended in divorce in 1989. He lived at Levington Park, a country house on directly on Lough Owel, near Mullingar, County Westmeath, from 1972. Donleavy died on 11 September 2017, aged 91.