In her home country, Edna O’Brien often caused controversy with her critical words about the situation of women, but at the same time she was celebrated by her readers. Now she has died at an advanced age.
The award-winning Irish writer Edna O’Brien has died. She died after a long illness at the age of 93, her publisher Faber and the literary agency PFD announced. “Edna O’Brien was one of the greatest writers of our time,” said Faber. “She revolutionized Irish literature by capturing the lives of women and the complexities of human existence in a luminous and economical prose that deeply influenced many subsequent writers.”
O’Brien was a defiant and courageous person who always tried to break new artistic ground and write truthfully. “The vitality of her prose was a reflection of her joy of life: she was the very best company, friendly, generous, mischievous, courageous.” O’Brien leaves behind two sons.
Books by Edna O’Brien were publicly burned
In her decades of writing, O’Brien published more than 20 books, most of them novels and historical collections. Few others dared to challenge Ireland’s religious, sexual and gender boundaries as concretely and poetically as she did.
She was living outside London with her former husband, the Irish-Czech writer Ernest Gebler, and two young children when she made the work “The Country Girls” famous and infamous, published in 1960.
It is about two young women from rural areas. In Ireland, the story was branded “filth” by a justice minister, and books were even publicly burned. The novel, like several subsequent works, was banned in Ireland in the 1960s because of excessive erotic promiscuity. The Irish women’s struggle for survival was always one of her favorite topics, and later other political and socially critical dimensions followed.
In “House of Splendid Isolation”, published in 1994, the IRA plays a crucial role, while “Down by the River” is about the passionate abortion debate in Ireland.
In the novel “Girl”, published in 2019, O’Brien finally dealt with the victims of the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram.
Source: Stern
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