You cannot add "The Fratricides" to the cart because the product is out of stock.
Join Faber Members for 10% off your first order.
Edna O’Brien’s beloved classics reveal the lives and loves of two girls in rural 1950s Ireland (with a foreword by Eimear McBride).
‘The taboo-breaking, the fabulous prose – there’s no one like Edna O’Brien … Beautiful.’ Anne Enright
‘Novels of heart-breaking empathy, rigorous honesty and peerless beauty.’ Eimear McBride
‘Brilliant and brave.’ Ann Patchett
‘A treasure.’ New York Times
ONE OF THE BBC’S ‘100 NOVELS THAT SHAPED OUR WORLD’
Caithleen ‘Kate’ Brady and Bridget ‘Baba’ Brennan are growing up in a repressive Irish village after World War II. Kate is a romantic, looking for love; Baba is a reckless survivor. After being expelled from convent school, they dream of the bright lights of Dublin – and are rewarded with bad luck and bad sex; marry for the wrong reasons; but continue to fight the expectations forced upon ‘girls’ of every era to become brave new women.
Edna O’Brien’s debut novels revolutionised Irish literature in the 1960s. Banned by the authorities as ‘indecent’ and burned by the clergy, they were notorious for their frank portrayal of sexual desire: but scandal turned to fame, and made this glorious coming-of-age tale an instant classic that inspires and delights readers to this day.
‘Buoyantly youthful … With all the freshness in the world.’ Sunday Times
‘An excellent and highly unusual blend of bawdiness and innocence.’ Evening Standard
‘O’Brien simply offers her characters and they come to us living.’ V.S. Naipaul
‘A natural writer … [such] unphoney charm and unlaborious originality.’ Kingsley Amis
‘One of the greatest Irish writers, of this or any era.’ Sunday Independent
‘One of our bravest and best novelists‘ Irish Times
‘A literary great.’ Times
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…
Read More
If you’re looking for reading inspiration, look no further. Here is our list of influential and important works of literature …
From sea adventures to interconnected narratives, we’ve picked out the best three-part sagas, long and short, from our list for …
Can't decide what to give your friends and family this year? Our Christmas Gift Guide is here to help. We’ve …
Celebrating our 90th anniversary, Faber staff take on the tricky task of selecting their three favourite Faber books.
The Great Comic Literary Conquistador: Edna O'Brien pays tribute to her friend and fellow writer Philip Roth.
Edna O'Brien has a frank and illuminating conversation about writing her novel The Little Red Chairs with her Faber editor …