LONDON (NYTimes) - The Ginger Man book was burned in Ireland.

When it was published in the United States, Chapter 10 was omitted.

Its expatriate American author, J.P. Donleavy, died on Monday at a hospital near his home in Mullingar, County Westmeath, Ireland.

He was 91. His sister said the cause was a stroke.

Donleavy had faced problems finding a publisher for The Ginger Man (1955), his bawdily adventurous story of 1940s university life in Dublin.

A friend suggested that he send the manuscript to Olympia Press in Paris.

This worked out well, in that it accepted the book, and not well, in that it was published as part of the Traveller's Companion series, which was known for erotica.

The book is now considered a contemporary classic, selling more than 45 million copies worldwide.

Donleavy wrote more than a dozen novels as well as plays and non-fiction books.

He was an accomplished painter too and had exhibitions on both sides of the Atlantic, including a show in Manhattan in 2007 when he was 81.

Asked to identify himself by nationality, Donleavy would say he was American.

But a writer for T: The New York Times Style Magazine described him in 2014 as "an odd fish swimming the mid-Atlantic apart from all the usual schools of thought".