The literary career of J.P. Donleavy (born 1926) has spanned nearly 50 years, though he is most famous for his first novel, The Ginger Man.

James Patrick Donleavy was born on April 23, 1926, in Brooklyn, New York. His parents were Irish immigrants who settled with their three children in the Bronx neighborhood of Woodlawn. Donleavy established a poor reputation in school when he was expelled from Fordham Preparatory, a New York Jesuit school. He served in the U.S. Naval Reserve during World War II, then used the GI bill to attend Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. He lived in Ireland and England, eventually settling permanently in Ireland. Donleavy became an Irish citizen in 1967 as "a purely practical matter of tax," he told Thomas E. Kennedy of Literary Review. "Not actually to gain money so much as to simplify my life." He settled into a 25-room mansion, which once belonged...