Frank McCourt's brother has revealed the novelist may have one final bestseller to deliver from beyond the grave. "I know there's a manuscript on the computer but we haven't had a chance to look at it yet," Malachy McCourt told the Sunday Tribune last week. "There's maybe a novel or another memoir. I know he was talking about going back to Limerick to do some more stuff but I don't really know what it was because we never discussed what we were working on with each other."

Pulitzer Prize-winning author McCourt (78), who passed away in New York three weeks ago, became a publishing sensation with autobiography Angela's Ashes in 1998.

"Frank didn't write books, he wrote them memories down and that's where he stood," McCourt said. "He was always a copious journal keeper. He made notes everywhere and used them for the basis of his books. The idea of another book from Frank is funny because I once suggested to him that he ask his publisher for an advance on a posthumous book but they wouldn't give it to him, because they didn't trust him. They doubted they could get it back [the book] from the beyond."

McCourt's publishers are now benefiting from the worldwide publicity prompted by the author's death last month. "The book sellers in the US tell us Frank's selling out all over the country. He's reached bestselling status again. If it was me, I wish the f**kers would have bought my books while I was still alive."

Another consequence of the author's death has been the huge number of cards and messages of sympathy received by his family from all over the world, including Limerick, where some had objected to the poverty-filled 1930s childhood McCourt portrayed in Angela's Ashes.

Nevertheless, Malachy McCourt says his brother was still receiving disgruntled letters from his home town right up until his death. "It was still going on and Frank would love to hear from them. He always got great craic out of them. In fact he had to go back and have a laugh at all the naysayers in Limerick because they would rather be dead than wrong. For the record, I grew up in exactly the same conditions in Limerick as Frank did. I would say he was f**king right. It happened."

The McCourt family are also at odds with plans in Limerick to erect a statue in memory of the late author. The likeness is planned for a site on Bedford Row, on the same street as a statue of Richard Harris.

"Frank would have howled at the idea of a statue of him. 'Jesus,' he'd have said, 'You're making a laughing stock out of me.' What he would have preferred is a couple of scholarships to some poor kids who don't have a chance. 'Send them to school and university and have a good life and not all the shite I went through.' That's what he would have said."

More than 200 people, including former US president Bill Clinton, attended a New York gathering in memory of Frank McCourt in New York.