Based on the autobiographical writings of journalist and poet Mark O'Brien, it celebrates life and wanting to be alive.

It is not an anti war book like Graves's Goodbye to All That or the various semi autobiographical writings of Sassoon.

In literature, however, the most potent archipelago was the Blaskets, off the Kerry coast, which produced a remarkable crop of autobiographical writings in Irish.

I read Oscar Wilde, of course, not only The Picture of Dorian Gray, but also his more autobiographical writings, and his biography by Robert Merle.