The Nicotine Cat and Other People

‘Memories aren’t true. But you can be true to them.’

The Nicotine Cat and Other People is a scrupulously truthful and wildly imaginative memoir by one of Ireland’s most singular poets and comic writers.

Augustus Young darts through memories of his childhood in Cork, his working life in London and the life he now leads in a curious town on the French-Spanish border.

His subjects include Father Dinneen’s wonderful Irish Dictionary, the philosophers Kierkegaard and David Hume, a Scottish artist called Welsh, Joab Comfort, who knows everything, and Alban Perfide, a surely imaginary novelist living out his own fiction.

The Nicotine Cat and Other People is a wise book with a low centre of levity.

Praise for The Nicotine Cat:

'This is a strange and in many ways beautiful book. It is odd, and stubborn, and comes from a writer who has always come out of left field to surprise and unsettle' Robert Welch, Irish Independent

Praise for Augustus Young:

‘Young’s unwillingness to curry favour, which makes him an outsider in the literary world, adds spice to a wryly clever and sometimes touchingly sweet book. There’s honey in the wasp’ Brian Lynch on Storytime

‘I haven’t laughed so much since reading [Flann O’Brien’s] The Third Policeman’ Alannah Hopkin, Irish Examiner on Light Years