A Monk Swimming by Malachy McCourt

'I was a smiley little fella with a raging heart and murderous instincts...'

In 1952, travelling steerage, Malachy McCourt left a childhood of poverty in Limerick, Ireland, heading for the promise of America. This is the story of what he brought with him, and what he thought he'd left behind.
   Armed with savage humour and a gift for storytelling, fuelled by rage and the desire never to go hungry again, he ran from the memories of a drunken, vanished father and the humiliations of Angela, his mother.
   He arrived in a New York reminiscent of a Damon Runyon Saga - a dark, glittering place, with bars on ever corner and a new story waiting every night. Larger than life, a world-class drinker. McCourt carved out a place for himself: in the saloons, as the first celebrity bartender, mixing with socialites, writers and movie stars: on stage, performing the works of James Joyce and Brendan Behan: and on television, where the tales he spun made him a 'Tonight Show' regular.
   He had money and women and, eventually, children of his own - and the legacy of his father. From the notorious Tombs prison of New York City, to poolside arrests in Beverly Hills: in the company of gold-smugglers in Zurich and whores in Calcutta: from Paris to Rome and to Limerick once more. McCourt fled again, until he had no choice but to stop and face his past.
   Darkly funny, shockingly raw, Malachy McCourt, a true original, tells his story with passion, wit, irreverence, and charm.

'Malachy McCourt, who has habitually regurgitated English in glorious colours to his fellow Irishmen and New Yorkers, here makes his vivid, whimsical, raucous, murderous joy and voice available tot he rest of us in tales of riot and glory which build on the story of the McCourts early life so dazzlingly told in Angela's Ashes by his brother Frank'
THOMAS KENEALLY