Cover art for The Butcher Boy
Published
Picador, June 2025
ISBN
9781035065226
Format
Softcover, 256 pages
Dimensions
19.8cm × 13cm × 1.7cm

The Butcher Boy

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Due June 10, 2025.
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A modern classic of Irish fiction, shortlisted for the 1992 Booker Prize.

When I was a young lad twenty or thirty or forty years ago I lived in a small town where they were all after me on account of what I done on Mrs Nugent.

Francie Brady is a small-town rascal who spends his days turning a blind eye to the troubles at home and getting up to mischief with his best friend Joe - hiding in the chicken-house, shouting abuse at fish in the local stream. But after a disagreement with his neighbour Mrs Nugent over her son's missing comic books, Francie's reckless streak spirals out of control and gives rise to a monstrous obsession . . .

Fearless, shocking and blackly funny, Patrick McCabe's The Butcher Boy won the 1992 Irish Times / Aer Lingus Literature Prize and was shortlisted for the 1992 Booker Prize. It is a modern classic of Irish fiction, a portrait of the insidious violence latent in small town life and of a frenzied young man lashing out at everyone, even himself.

Now part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the very best of modern literature.

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