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He was awarded an honorary Knight Bachelor of the Order of the British Empire in the 2002 Queen's Honours List for his services to literature. He has lived in the United Kingdom since 1962.

Playwright and short story writer. He won the Whitbread Prize in 1994, and was shortlisted four times for the Man Booker Prize.

He attended St Columba's College and Trinity College in Dublin. Before becoming a full-time writer, he was a teacher and a copywriter in an advertising agency.