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CELEBRATED IRISH AUTHOR Edna O’Brien has been appointed a Dame of the British Empire for her services to literature.
O’Brien, a prolific novelist, playwright, poet and short story writer from Co Clare, has won numerous awards for her writing, including the European Prize for Literature and the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.
O’Brien described the latest honour as “very gratifying.”
It unites me in some etheric way to readers I don’t know and is an incentive, at 88, to keep going.
Today, she was made Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire – the second-highest rank in Britain’s honour system. The honour is awarded to those who have made contributions to the arts and scientists or contributed to charitable organisations.
Stephen Page, the CEO of O’Brien’s publisher, Faber & Faber, said that O’Brien’s “international reputation and readerships stand as a testament to her importance and originality.”
O’Brien, now 88, has lived in London since the 1950s. However, as an Irish citizen, her title will be an honorary one.
Her debut novel, The Country Girls, was published in 1962, and won the Kingsley Amis Award. It tells the story of a young woman navigating a repressive Irish society after World War II. The book was banned by the Irish censor and a few burned at the request of a Limerick parish priest.
O’Brien has continued to court controversial topics, with her 1994 book House of Splendid Isolation focused on a terrorist who goes on the run and Down by the River, published in 1996, telling the story of an underage rape victim who sought an abortion in England.
Her memoir, County Girl, was published in 2012.
Edna O’Brien is an Irish woman who has achieved many accolades for her work. She has been an inspirational woman for me throughout my lifetime and I wish her many congratulations on this new honour, which is so well deserved. I am glad that she feels the award is an incentive to keep going. Hopefully she will continue to produce more works of literature for some time to come.
@Deborah Blacoe:
She writes about “oppression” and lack of equality, then becomes a titled aristocrat of an oppressive empire – the result of which still remains in the North and elsewhere today.
We were all thinking it.
Why did she wait this long to sell out?
@T Beckett is back: troll. You do realize, as mentioned in the article, that it’s an honorary title and that she is not in fact aristocracy as a result?
@Vocal Outrage:
So she’s an honorary hypocrite then.
Well done.
I’d say it will make it easier to book a table in busy restaurants, if she doesn’t feel like cooking. Surprised that anyone would be so impressed by it as to complain about it.
@T Beckett is back: I am sure Edna O’Brien does not need me to fight her corner. She is one of the most eloquent orators I have had the privilege of listening to. You on the other hand, are using cheap inflammatory language to impart your own ill informed view of the lady in question.
@T Beckett is back: it’s not aristocratic as it cannot be inherited .Suggest you consult a dictionary.
Yeah Edna o brien was writing about young women and how repression and freedom were present in their lives and how tragic their lives could be made through the prevailing repressive culture of the times in the 60s plus…long before the current wave of pressure to respect women in a real understanding amd acceptable manner. she’s one of the true heroes of Ireland..
@Michael Griffin: Of England?
Fantastic, well deserved. Thank God life has improved for people like Edna
When I was at school she was vilified by ignorant people who wanted to control our thinking on everything
jnnjujujukuuuu
@Mrtin Corrigan:
Is Louise O’Neill getting a reward?
Looking well for a couple of snowmen!!!
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