Angela’s Ashes author Frank McCourt dies of cancer

London (ANI): Irish-American author Frank McCourt, best known for his moving memoir 'Angela's Ashes," died of cancer in a New York hospice on Sunday afternoon. The writer was suffering from meningitis and was also fighting melanoma.

Susan Moldow of McCourt's publisher Scribner said the cause of his death was metastatic melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer, the BBC reports. The 78-year-old writer had won Pulitzer Prize for his work 'Angela"s Ashes", which he also marked as "epic of woe".

The book dwelt into his childhood in abject poverty in the slums of the Irish city of Limerick after he relocated to Ireland from New York during the Great Depression with his parents at an early age. However, before the book's 1996 publication, McCourt worked as a New York high school teacher for 30 years.

The book was also adapted into a Hollywood film in 1999 starring Emily Watson and Robert Carlyle. His other works include ''Tis and Teacher Man," which was inspired by his later life in New York.