Until a few days ago, I would tell anyone who asked that Edna O’Brien was our greatest living Irish writer. It is a great loss that she is no longer living. The author, born in 1930, had a long and storied literary career, her books reflecting on topics as diverse as the IRA, Bosnia and Boko Haram. But it was The Country Girls, her debut novel, published in 1960, that had the most seismic impact on Ireland and the broader literary world.
The book was banned by the Irish censor for its sexually explicit content and copies were even burned by one particularly melodramatic priest. O’Brien herself received angry, threatening letters and was patronised by other Irish writers (all male, of course). Anne Enright