The BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls trilogy begins in August 2019.
After leaving for a religious community in Belgium, the young woman in A Pagan Place becomes lost in memories of her childhood in rural Ireland, reflecting on the rituals of village life, the people she encountered, the enchanting beauty of the landscape, the concept of home - and the shocking event that led to her departure ...
Edna O'Brien's stunning new novel Girl will be published by Faber in September 2019, available to pre-order now.
Edna O'Brien has written more than twenty works of fiction. She is the recipient of many awards, including the Irish PEN Lifetime Achievement Award, the American National Arts Gold Medal, the Frank O'Connor Prize, the PEN/Nabokov Award For Achievement in International Literature, and the David Cohen Prize for Literature. Born and raised in the west of Ireland, she has lived in London for many years.
Edna O'Brien is one of the greatest writers in the English-speaking world.
New York Times
It's a feast of a book and, for all its central sadness, a great celebration of life.
Daily Mail
The first eighty pages . . . constitute a reconstruction of a childhood experience which, so far as I know, is unique in the English language . . . [The book] is outstandingly memorable because its genius is the pain of memory.
John Berger
She evokes with power and precision the claustrophobic warmth, the boredom, terror and gaiety of a particular life in a particular time and place . . . a work of considerable distinction.
Sunday Times
Edna O'Brien is one of our bravest and best novelists.
Irish Times
O'Brien's evocative prose shows the chilling hold that history and the dead clamp on the living.
Time