Frank McCourt, author of best-seller Angela's Ashes, has died of cancer in a New York hospice.

畅销书Angela's Ashes的作者Frank McCourt，因癌症在纽约一家医院逝世。

McCourt contracted meningitis while being treated for melanoma

The 78-year-old Irish-American writer was suffering from meningitis（髓膜炎） and had recently been treated for melanoma（黑素瘤，胎记瘤）, the deadliest form of skin cancer.

Angela's Ashes, a memoir¹（传记，实录） of McCourt's childhood in Ireland, sold millions of copies and won the Pulitzer Prize.

Before the book's 1996 publication, McCourt was a New York high school teacher for 30 years.

Quoted by the New York Times newspaper, Susan Moldow of McCourt's publisher Scribner said the cause of his death, on Sunday afternoon, was metastatic（新陈代谢的） melanoma.

'Epic² of woe³'

Born in New York, McCourt travelled to Ireland during the Great Depression with his parents at an early age.

Angela's Ashes provides a graphic⁴ description of his childhood in abject⁵ poverty in the slums of the Irish city of Limerick.

Described by its author as an "epic（史诗，叙事诗） of woe（悲哀，悲痛）", the book was made into a Hollywood film in 1999 starring Emily Watson and Robert Carlyle.

The BBC's Matt McGrath, an admirer（钦佩者，仰慕者） of Frank McCourt's work, says it shone a light on a dark period of Ireland's social history.

His other works include 'Tis and Teacher Man, which both draw on his later life in New York.