Edna O’Brien
In 1988 I had the pleasure of speaking with the vivacious Irish novelist, memoirist, playwright, poet, and short-story writer Edna O’Brien on a book tour for ‘The High Road’. O’Brien achieved international acclaim but her books were banned in her homeland. She had a prolific career lasting more than half a century. Irish President Michael D. Higgins gave O’Brien the country’s highest literary accolade, the Saoi of Aosdána, in 2015. He said, “Edna was a fearless teller of truths, a superb writer possessed of the moral courage to confront Irish society with realities long ignored and suppressed.”
In this interview, she explains why (in 1988) no woman had ever written a male character as well as the female characters described by male novelists
