A Pagan Place

About Edna O'Brien

Edna O'Brien wrote more than twenty celebrated novels including her classic The Country Girls Trilogy as well as multiple plays and works of non-fiction which have been translated into over thirty languages. Her final novel was the acclaimed Girl which won the Kerry Group Prize for Fiction in 2020. She was the recipient of many accolades including the Irish PEN Lifetime Achievement Award the American National Arts Gold Medal the Frank O'Connor Prize the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature and the David Cohen Prize for Literature. In 2018 O'Brien was appointed an honorary Dame of the Order of the British Empire and in 2021 she was also awarded the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Born and raised in the west of Ireland she lived in London for many years before her death on 27 July 2024.