Frank McCourt - Böcker

Stunning reissue of the phenomenal worldwide bestseller: Frank McCourt's sad, funny, bittersweet memoir of growing up in New York in the 30s and in Ireland in the 40s.It is a story of extreme hardship and suffering, in Brooklyn tenements and Limerick slums – too many children, too little money, his mother Angela barely coping as his father Malachy's drinking bouts constantly brings the family to the brink of disaster. It is a story of courage and survival against apparently overwhelming odds.Written with the vitality and resonance of a work of fiction, and with a remarkable absence of sentimentality, ‘Angela’s Ashes’ is imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's distinctive humour and compassion. Out of terrible circumstances, he has created a glorious book in the tradition of Ireland's literary masters, which bears all the marks of a great classic.

A third memoir from the author of the huge international bestsellers Angela’s Ashes and ‘Tis. In Teacher Man, Frank McCourt details his illustrious, amusing, and sometimes rather bumpy long years as an English teacher in the public high schools of New York City…Frank McCourt arrived in New York as a young, impoverished and idealistic Irish boy – but one who crucially had an American passport, having been born in Brooklyn. He didn't know what he wanted except to stop being hungry and to better himself. On the subway he watched students carrying books. He saw how they read and underlined and wrote things in the margin and he liked the look of this very much. He joined the New York Public Library and every night when he came back from his hotel work he would sit up reading the great novels.Building his confidence and his determination, he talked his way into NYU and gained a literature degree and so began a teaching career that was to last 30 years, working in New York's public high schools. Frank estimates that he probably taught 12,000 children during this time and it is on this relationship between teacher and student that he reflects in ‘Teacher Man’, the third in his series of memoirs.The New York high school is a restless, noisy and unpredictable place and Frank believes that it was his attempts to control and cajole these thousands of children into learning and achieving something for themselves that turned him into a writer. At least once a day someone would put up their hand and shout 'Mr. McCourt, Mr. McCourt, tell us about Ireland, tell us about how poor you were …' Through sharing his own life with these kids he learnt the power of narrative storytelling, and out of the invaluable experience of holding 12,000 people's attention came ‘Angela's Ashes’.Frank McCourt was a legend in such schools as Stuyvesant High School – long before he became the figure he is now he would receive letters from former students telling him how much his teaching influenced and inspired them – and now in ‘Teacher Man’ he shares his reminiscences of those 30 years and reveals how they led to his own success with ‘Angela's Ashes’ and ‘'Tis’.

Frank McCourt continues his life story in the brilliant, bestselling sequel to the million-selling ‘Angela’s Ashes’.‘Angela’s Ashes’ was a publishing phenomenon. Frank McCourt’s critically-acclaimed, lyrical memoir of his Limerick childhood won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics’ Circle Award, the Royal Society of Literature Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Award amongst others, and rapidly became a word-of-mouth bestseller topping all charts worldwide for over two years. It left readers and critics alike eager to hear more about Frank McCourt’s incredible, poignant life.‘’Tis’ is the story of Frank’s American journey from impoverished immigrant with rotten teeth, infected eyes and no formal education to brilliant raconteur and schoolteacher. Saved first by a straying priest, then by the Democratic party, then by the United States Army, then by New York University – which admitted him on a trial basis though he had no high school diploma – Frank had the same vulnerable but invincible spirit at nineteen that he had at eight and still has today. And ‘‘Tis’ is a tale of survival as vivid, harrowing, and hilarious as Angela’s Ashes. Yet again, it is through the power of storytelling that Frank finds a life for himself. ‘It is only the best storyteller who can so beguile his readers that he leaves them wanting more when he’s done. McCourt proves himself one of the very best’ (Newsweek). ‘With ‘Tis’, McCourt blesses his readers with another chapter of his story, but as it closes, they will want still more.

Characters: 2 male Bare stage A Couple of Blaguards, a two-man show by literary greats Frank and Malachy McCourt, is a bubbling stew of their well-known humor with a dash of poignancy to sharpen the flavor. A comedic springboard for Angela's Ashes, 'Tis, and Malachy's A Monk Swimmin', this brilliantly structured comedy is a proven crowd-pleaser offering solid entertainment. Similar to Frank McCourt's best-selling novels, the story follows the trials of the young McCourts in poverty-stricken Limerick, Ireland, to their journey to the U.S. and Brooklyn, New York, where the young men learn to incorporate the day-to-day lessons of their hard Irish past. A story of immigration, triumph over hardship, and the love between family, A Couple of Blaguards is a theatrical event that will find a place in the heart of every audience member. "MEMORABLE! The brothers McCourt bring their two best selling books to the stage...the show has a roguish appeal" - Peter Marks, The New York Times "An unholy amount of charm!" - The Washington Post "Mixes the sweetness and kick of an Irish coffee." - Newsday

A treasure chest of never-before-collected essays from Frank McCourt, Pulitzer Prize–winning memoirist, and his boisterous brother Malachy, publishing on the 30th anniversary of Angela’s Ashes, with a foreword by Colum McCannIn 1996, a retired New York City high school English teacher published a memoir that took the publishing world by storm. Angela’s Ashes, the story of Frank McCourt’s childhood in Ireland, was a bold account of poverty and family tragedy, suffused with humor and compassion. It went on to sell over ten million copies and won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award.Frank McCourt was suddenly an internationally celebrated memoirist, a writer who had invigorated the genre. But most readers didn’t know that Angela’s Ashes wasn’t Frank’s first published writing. For years, he and his actor brother Malachy contributed a column to a neighborhood newspaper called The West Side Spirit. Malachy, himself a bestselling writer, also contributed to Our Town, Irish America, and The Southampton Review. And Frank went on to write for prominent publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Esquire, Life, and Rolling Stone. Sez I To Myself collects the best of those essays and works of journalism. Here the brothers McCourt tackle parades and pubs, classrooms and churches, the immigrant experience, loss, 9/11, the writing life, and more. This is a charming, tender, and insightful collection, a welcome new book from two masterful and much-loved writers.