Skippy Dies
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  • Published: 9 June 2011
  • ISBN: 9780141009957
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 672
  • RRP: $27.99

Skippy Dies

Formats & editions
Paperback
9 Jun 2011
EBook
1 Mar 2010
Audiobook
7 Apr 2011
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A beloved tragicomic masterpiece: 'Marvellous, witty, heartbreaking. The writing is second to none, the banter brilliant. Crazy, but beautiful' Daily Telegraph

Ruprecht Van Doren is an overweight genius whose hobbies include very difficult maths and the Search of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Daniel 'Skippy' Juster is his roommate. In the grand old Dublin institution that is Seabrook College for Boys, nobody pays either of them much attention. But when Skippy falls for Lori, the frisbee-playing siren from the girls' school next door, suddenly all kinds of people take an interest - including Carl, part-time drug-dealer and official school psychopath. . .

A tragic comedy of epic sweep and dimension, Skippy Dies scours the corners of the human heart and wrings every drop of pathos, humour and hopelessness out of life, love, Robert Graves, mermaids, M-theory, and everything in between.
  • Published: 9 June 2011
  • ISBN: 9780141009957
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 672
  • RRP: $27.99
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About the author

Paul Murray

Paul Murray was born in Dublin in 1975 and is the author of An Evening of Long Goodbyes, Skippy Dies, The Mark and the Void and The Bee Sting. An Evening of Long Goodbyes was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and nominated for the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. Skippy Dies was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and longlisted for the Booker Prize. The Mark and the Void won the Everyman Wodehouse Prize. The Bee Sting won the Nero Book of the Year Award and the An Post Irish Book of the Year, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Writers’ Prize for Fiction and the Kirkus Prize for Fiction. Paul Murray lives in Dublin.

portrait photo of Paul Murray

Also by Paul Murray

The Bee Sting
The Mark and the Void
An Evening of Long Goodbyes
See all

Praise for Skippy Dies

Novels rarely come as funny and as moving as this utterly brilliant exploration of teenhood and the anticlimax of becoming an adult . . . Skippy Dies is intuitive, truthful and one of the finest comic novels written anywhere. Dies? Never! Skippy lives

Eileen Battersby, Irish Times

I loved Skippy Dies . . . three novels fused into one ignited tragicomic tour de force

Ali Smith, Times Literary Supplement

Skippy Dies is one great high-octane fizz bang of a book

Patrick McCabe, Irish Times

Extravagantly entertaining

New York Times Book Review

A comic epic. Murray is a brilliant comic writer, but also humane and touching, and he captures the misery and elation, joy and anxiety of teenage life. A brilliant depiction of the heaven and hell of male adolescence

David Nicholls, Guardian

Murray's writing has earned a place in the contemporary international canon . . . Murray's characters are so three-dimensionally drawn and brought to such vivid life that they may haunt your dreams

Irish Independent
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