Author Who Amplified Irish Women’s Voices Dies at 93

Edna O’Brien, an author whose works were initially banned in Ireland but later gained international acclaim, passed away on Saturday after a prolonged illness at the age of 93. Her death was confirmed by her publisher, Faber, and the literary agency PFD.

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

Over the course of her career, O’Brien published more than 20 books, including novels and story collections that challenged Ireland’s religious, sexual, and gender boundaries. Her works often explored themes of loneliness, rebellion, desire, and persecution.

“O’Brien is attracted to taboos just as they break, to the place of greatest heat and darkness and, you might even say, danger to her mortal soul,” Booker Prize winner Anne Enright wrote of her in the Guardian in 2012.

O’Brien was almost 30 years old, living in London with her husband and two children, when her novel The Country Girls was published. Written in just three weeks and released in 1960 for an advance of around $75, The Country Girls narrates the journey of two young women from a rural convent to the complexities and adventures of Dublin.

While her novel was lauded in London and New York, it faced severe backlash in Ireland. It was deemed “filth” by Ireland’s Minister of Justice, Charles Haughey, and was burned publicly in her hometown of Tuamgraney, County Clare. Among her critics were her parents and her husband, the author Ernest Gebler, from whom she was becoming estranged.

O’Brien continued the stories of the characters Kate and Baba in The Lonely Girl and Girls in Their Married Bliss. By the mid-1960s, O’Brien had become an international celebrity.

During the 1980s, she was recognized by the band Dexy’s Midnight Runners, who mentioned her alongside literary greats such as Eugene O’Neill, Samuel Beckett, and Oscar Wilde in their tribute song Burn It Down.

O’Brien’s accolades included an Irish Book Award for lifetime achievement, the PEN/Nabokov prize, and the Frank O’Connor award in 2011 for her story collection Saints and Sinners.

She is survived by her sons, Marcus and Carlos.