Patrick McGrath

Patrick McGrath is a British novelist born in London in 1950 and raised near Broadmoor Hospital, where his father served as medical superintendent, an upbringing that shaped his enduring interest in madness and institutional life. After working in psychiatric hospitals in Canada, he settled in New York in 1981 and turned to fiction, becoming a leading figure in the modern gothic revival. His novels, including The Grotesque, Dr. Haggard's Disease, Spider, and Asylum, are narrated by unreliable or unstable protagonists and explore obsession, delusion, and repression within claustrophobic domestic and institutional settings; several, including Spider and Asylum, have been adapted for film. He has also published short-story collections such as Blood and Water and Other Tales, and taught creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin.