'Defiant and courageous' Edna O'Brien dies aged 93

The author Edna O’Brien has died aged 93, her agent and publisher have said. Born in a small village in County Clare in 1930, her début, The Country Girls (Faber), was banned and burned in her local chapel when it was first published in 1960. A novelist, memoirist, playwright, poet and short story writer, her career stretched over 50 years.

The announcement circulated on behalf of her agent and publisher read: "It is with great sadness that Caroline Michel at PFD and Faber announce the death of beloved author Edna O’Brien. She died peacefully on Saturday 27th July after a long illness. Our thoughts are with her family and friends, in particular her sons. The family has requested privacy at this time."

Faber said: "Edna O’Brien was one of the greatest writers of our age. She revolutionised Irish literature, capturing the lives of women and the complexities of the human condition in prose that was luminous and spare, and which had a profound influence on so many writers who followed her.  

"A defiant and courageous spirit, Edna constantly strove to break new artistic ground, to write truthfully, from a place of deep feeling. The vitality of her prose was a mirror of her zest for life: she was the very best company, kind, generous, mischievous, brave."

The publisher added: "Edna was a dear friend to us all, and we will miss her dreadfully. It is Faber’s huge privilege to publish her, and her bold and brilliant body of work lives on."

Michel said: "In Girl with Green Eyes... the immortal centrepiece of the masterful Country Girls trilogy... Edna writes: ‘We all leave one another. We die... If I do leave you, I will have passed on to you something of myself; you will be a different person because of knowing me; it’s inescapable.’"

Michel added: "Edna is inescapable... once read, once met, she is forever rebelliously and joyously in your life."

In 2019, she won the David Cohen Prize for Literature for having "broken down social and sexual barriers for women in Ireland and beyond and moved mountains both politically and lyrically through her writing".