2024-07-28 20:37:21
In her native country, Edna O’Brien often caused outrage with her controversial words about the status of women, but at the same time she was celebrated by her readers. Now he has died of old age.
Award-winning Irish author Edna O’Brien has died after a long illness at the age of 93, her publisher Faber and literary firm PFD have announced.
“Edna O’Brien is one of the greatest writers of our time,” Faber explained. “She revolutionized Irish literature by capturing women’s lives and the complexities of human life in a light and subtle way that greatly influenced many subsequent women writers.”
O’Brien is a controversial and courageous person who always tries to break new artistic ground and write authentically. “The vitality of his prose was a reality of his joy of life: he was the best of the house, friendly, generous, mischieveous, brave.” O’Brien left behind two sons.
During his decades-long career, O’Brien published more than 20 books, most of them novels and story collections. Few others dared to challenge Ireland’s religious, sexual and gender boundaries as seriously and poetically as he did.
She was living outside London with her ex-husband, the Irish-Czech writer Ernest Gebler, and two small children when she made Country Girls, published in 1960, famous and popular.
It is about two young women from rural areas. In Ireland, the story was branded “disgusting” by the justice minister and the papers were even burned in public. The novel, like many subsequent works, was banned in Ireland in the 1960s due to its excessive provocativeness.
Irish women’s struggle for survival was always one of her favorite subjects, later other political and social dimensions followed.
In “The House of Splendid Isolation”, published in 1994, the IRA played an important role, while “Down by the River” was about the passionate abortion debate in Ireland.
In the novel “The Girl”, published in 2019, O’Brien finally dealt with the victims of the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram. (dpa)
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