Remembering Edna O’Brien, 1930–2024

Recognised by many as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, Edna O’Brien had a career lasting more than half a century.

Paying tribute, her publisher Faber said she was “one of the greatest writers of our age.”

The recipient of many awards, in 2019, she was awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature, which is awarded biennially to one writer from the UK or Ireland for their complete body of work.

Mark Lawson, chair of the David Cohen Prize Judges, said: “In my five experiences of chairing the David Cohen Prize, I have found that a key consideration is the graph of the author’s work. Some writers blaze early, then fade, publishing later books far below their best. In contrast, Edna O’Brien has achieved a rare arc of brilliant consistency.”

O’Brien gave a voice to women dealing with the repressive expectations in Irish society. Her early novels were banned in Ireland but garnered international acclaim.

Faber praised her ‘defiant and courageous spirit’: “Edna constantly strove to break new artistic ground, to write truthfully, from a place of deep feeling.”

Edna grew up in a small village in County Clare with a childhood she described as full of “money troubles, drink troubles, all sorts of troubles.”

She worked as a reader for publisher Hutchinson when she moved to London in 1959, and wrote her first novel, The Country Girls, published in 1960. The ground-breaking account of two female friends and the portrayal of female sexuality scandalised Ireland. The novel was banned in Ireland, as were her next six novels.

Ireland later shifted its approach, giving her the highest literary accolade, the Saoi of Aosdána, in 2015.

Ireland’s president, Michael D Higgins said he felt “great sorrow” at her death, and described O’Brien as a “fearless teller of truths, a superb writer possessed of the moral courage to confront Irish society with realities long ignored and suppressed.”

He added, “Through that deeply insightful work, rich in humanity, Edna O’Brien was one of the first writers to provide a true voice to the experiences of women in Ireland in their different generations and played an important role in transforming the status of women across Irish society.”

Faber added: “It is Faber’s huge privilege to publish her, and her bold and brilliant body of work lives on.”

O’Brien wrote more than 20 novels, as well as dramas and biographies.

John Banville called her “simply, one of the finest writers of our time” and over the decades she has drawn admiration from fellow writers across the literary landscape, including J. M. Coetzee, Ann Patchett, John Berger, Philip Roth, Anne Enright, Michael Ondaatje, Richard Ford, and Ian McKellen.

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 a Prix Femina Special.