Welcome to the Lit Blog of The Library at ICHC! Our first post, a tribute to Edna O'Brien who passed away this last weekend.
Hailed as one of the greatest chroniclers of the female experience in the twentieth century, Ireland’s president Michael Higgins called her a “fearless teller of truths, a superb writer possessed of the moral courage to confront Irish society with realities long ignored and suppressed.” Writing since the 1960’s, her themes are still, unfortunately, relevant today.
O’Brien published her first book, The Country Girls, in 1960. Influenced by James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, she frequently wrote autobiographically. Her Country Girls trilogy was banned shortly after publication in Ireland owing to the portrayal of her characters’ sex lives. She later published a biography of James Joyce.
She was the 2011 recipient of the Frank O’Connor Prize for her short story collection Saints and Sinners. She also received, among other honors, the Irish PEN Award for Literature, the Ulysses Medal from university College Dublin and a lifetime achievement award from the Irish Literary Academy.
O’Brien wrote at all levels of literature including Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry, Short Stories, Children’s books, Drama and the Screenplay for Zee & Co. (based on her play of the same name).
You can find O’Brien’s works in The Library At ICHC.
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