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The Little Red Chairs
The BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls trilogy begins in August 2019.
Her stunning new novel Girl will be published by Faber in September 2019, available to pre-order now
We are temporarily only able to ship Faber Shop orders to addresses in the UK.
Ten years on from her last novel, Edna O’Brien reminds us why she is thought to be one of the great Irish writers of this and any generation.
When a wanted war criminal from the Balkans, masquerading as a faith healer, settles in a small west coast Irish village, the community are in thrall. One woman, Fidelma McBride, falls under his spell and in this astonishing novel, Edna O’Brien charts the consequences of that fatal attraction.
The Little Red Chairs is a story about love, the artifice of evil, and the terrible necessity of accountability in our shattered, damaged world. A narrative which dares to travel deep into the darkness has produced a book of enormous emotional intelligence and courage. Written with a fierce lyricism and sensibility, The Little Red Chairs dares to suggest there is a way back to redemption and hope when great evil is done. Almost six decades on from her debut, Edna O’Brien has produced what may be her masterpiece in the novel form.
The great Edna O'Brien has written her masterpiece.
An extraordinary triumph ... This is storytelling of the highest order, resounding with the empathy and authority we yearn for in fine writing ... Edna O'Brien is one of the greatest Irish writers, of this or any era.
Edna O'Brien has created a memorable work of art for our unsettled times ... Her prose is as lyrically arresting as ever, her vision as astute, and as delicate. The Little Red Chairs is notable for its interweaving of the near-mythical and the urgent present, and for its unflinching exploration of the complex and lasting effects of human brutality ... at once arduous and beautiful.
O'Brien is a very gifted novelist ... There is much to think about in this rich, searching and enthralling book, a novel of ideas as well as emotions, and arguably one of the most interesting and ambitious ever written by an Irish author.
The product of an extraordinary talent ... a novel that leaves an indelible impression - gorgeously written and fiercely humane.
Authoritative and engrossing ... filled with a narrative energy and aplomb ... O'Brien is among the most compellingly observant of present-day novelists.
Edna O’Brien has written more than twenty works of fiction. She is the recipient of many awards, 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 2021, Edna O’Brien was awarded the French Ordre des Arts…
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