Robert McLiam Wilson is a Northern Irish

Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...

 novelist. He attended St Malachy's College and studied at University of Cambridge

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

; however, he dropped out and, for a short time, was homeless. This period of his life profoundly affected his later life and influenced his works.

McLiam Wilson has written three novels; Ripley Bogle (1989), Manfred's Pain (1992) and Eureka Street (1996). Ripley Bogle is a novel about a homeless man in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

. It won the Rooney Prize and the Hughes Prize in 1989, and a Betty Trask Award

Betty Trask Award

The Betty Trask Prize and Awards are for first novels written by authors under the age of 35, who reside in a current or former Commonwealth nation. The awards were established in 1984 by the Society of Authors, at the bequest of the late Betty Trask, a reclusive author of over thirty romance novels...

 and the Irish Book Awards

Irish Book Awards

The Irish Book Awards is an annual Irish literary award given to books and authors in various categories. It is the only literary award supported by all-Irish bookstores. First awarded in 2006, they grew out of the Hughes & Hughes bookstore's Irish Novel of the Year Prize which was inaugurated in...

 in 1990. Eureka Street focuses on the lives of two Belfast friends, one Catholic and one Protestant, shortly before and after the IRA

Irish Republican Army

The Irish Republican Army was an Irish republican revolutionary military organisation. It was descended from the Irish Volunteers, an organisation established on 25 November 1913 that staged the Easter Rising in April 1916...

 ceasefires in 1994. A BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 TV adaptation of Eureka Street was broadcast in 1999. He is also the author of a non-fiction book about poverty, The Dispossessed (1992), and has made television documentaries for the BBC.

In 2003, he was named by Granta magazine as one of 20 "Best of Young British Novelists", despite the fact that he has not published new work in English since 1996. His next novel, Extremists, has been postponed again and again. Wilson reportedly married and moved to Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

.