Outsider
Description
'A remarkable story, a real page-turner' JOE DUFFY
'Powerfully written ... a gripping narrative' FINTAN O'TOOLE
The remarkable story of one man's journey from the edge of death to the heart of a hidden past.
Adopted at age three, Paul Cullen always felt like an outsider. After a near-fatal fall from Germany's highest peak in 2017 left him broken - physically and emotionally - he faced a personal reckoning. As he lay injured on the mountain, he knew that if he survived, he could no longer avoid the questions that had haunted him since childhood.
What happened in those missing early years? Who cared for him before his adoption? And why was it so hard to find the truth?
Outsider follows Paul's search for answers, from a mother and baby home in 1960s London to a suburban estate in 1970s Dublin, in a house lit with love but shadowed by a darker truth. As his body heals, he pieces together the fragments of his identity, confronting the silence of a closed adoption system and the emotional legacy of a hidden past.
Courageous and deeply personal, Outsider is a powerful story of survival, belonging and the enduring human need to know where we come from.
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Person
Paul Cullen is a journalist and the author of three acclaimed non-fiction books. Born in London and raised in Dublin, he studied engineering at Trinity College Dublin before spending five years in Switzerland. On returning to Ireland, he trained in journalism at Dublin City University and joined The Irish Times in 1993, where he reported on health, politics, consumer affairs, international development, and education over a distinguished three-decade career.
He is the author of the best-selling With a Little Help from My Friends, which investigated corruption uncovered by the planning tribunal, and has won numerous awards for his work - including Irish News Journalist of the Year in 2023. Outsider: A Memoir of Survival, Family Secrets and the Search to Belong, was published by Hachette Ireland in February 2026, and will be followed in October the same year by his ground-breaking expose of the Irish national children's hospital scandal Billion Dollar Baby.
Paul Cullen lives in Dublin with his wife and four children.
