what is the background of the novel angelas ashes

After retiring from teaching writing at a variety of New York City high schools, Frank McCourt was determined to write about his early life in Ireland before coming to America. The result, Angela's Ashes, was published in 1996 by Scribner and sold over 5 million copies; it has been published in 27 countries, translated into 17 languages and has won for McCourt the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the ABBY Award and the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. Indeed, Angela's Ashes vaulted McCourt from an unknown sixty-year old first-time writer to a world-renowned author.