O'Brien wins Pleasure of Reading Prize

Edna O’Brien has won the Pleasure of Reading Prize for her "bold, brave and sometimes visionary" body of work. 

The Pleasure of Reading Prize recognises an author, writing in English, who brings pleasure through their writing. Prize money of £10,000 is shared between the winning author and a charitable Give a Book project of their choice. The prize takes its name from a 2015 anthology by Give a Book’s patron Lady Antonia Fraser, published by Bloomsbury. 

O’Brien was chosen by a panel of judges featuring Bloomsbury authors Louise Kennedy and Benjamin Myers alongside last year’s winner Ali Smith.

The award-winning Irish author, whose writing spans novels, plays, and short stories, has received the Irish PEN Award for Literature, the Ulysses Medal from University College Dublin, the Frank O’Connor Prize, and a lifetime achievement award from the Irish Literary Academy. 

Her 1960 debut novel The Country Girl (Faber) was banned in her native Ireland for its ground-breaking depictions of female sexuality. Other notable works include August Is a Wicked Month (Faber), A Pagan Place (Faber) and Lantern Slides (Weidenfeld & Nicolson). 

“The pleasure of reading has not abated and for me this unexpected honour might do much to invigorate the variable pleasure of writing; I am very happy to receive it," she said. 

Kennedy said: “What a journey Edna O’Brien has brought her readers on, giving us luminous and sometimes savage glimpses of shame, desire and cruelty. She announced herself with The Country Girls, a chronicle of the inner lives and fraught friendships of a pair of Irish teenagers, a book burned and banned in her home place. That almost 60 years later, she travelled to Lagos – her underwear stuffed with cash with which to bribe officials — to meet former child captives of Boko Haram, seems at once astonishing and inevitable. For her glorious way with language, her persistence and her devotion to the truth, we are thrilled to award the Pleasure of Reading Prize to Edna O’Brien.”

Myers, whose latest novel, The Perfect Golden Circle was released in May, added: “For over six decades Edna O’Brien has carved a singular niche through modern literature. Her work, like her life, is bold, brave and sometimes visionary. She didn’t so much open doors as kick them down, and in doing so repositioned the novel in Irish writing, inspiring successive generations of key writers who followed."

The prize is sponsored by Bloomsbury and supported by the Blavatnik Family Foundation.