Edna O'Brien's first novel The Country Girls and its sequels The Lonely Girl and Girls in their Married Bliss changed the temperature of Irish literature in the 1960s. The characters of Kate Brady and her friend Baba Brennan have inspired generation after generation of readers and writers, as we see them struggling against the confines of a rural Irish convent school; revelling in the bright lights of Dublin; and weathering the unexpected challenges of married life in London. The passion, artistry, and courage of Edna O'Brien's vision in these novels - tender portraits of innocence and youth, love and passion, dreams and reality - resonate into the twenty-first century, and are illuminated by Eimear McBride's new foreword.

An unnamed protagonist is on holiday with her new, much-married lover, in the company of the monstrously rich.

'How long would she last? It would be uppermost in all their minds.'

Each day, while the others are out at sea, she is taught to swim. Eventually, she will be expected to perform. The pressure mounts; it is only a matter of time before she snaps.

Edna O'Brien crafts a quietly horrifying scene of eroticism and insecurity, and makes one woman's near-fatal discomfort stand for society's larger trap.

The legendary Edna O'Brien's tale of a mysterious stranger spellbinding an Irish village is 'the kind of masterpiece that reminds you why you read books in the first place' (Observer). ONE OF THE SUNDAY TIMES' TOP 100 NOVELS OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY 'Magnificent' (Sunday Times) 'Beautiful' (Financial Times) 'Enthralling' (Times) 'Extraordinary' (Independent) 'Astonishing' (New Yorker) When a man who calls himself a faith healer arrives in a small, west-coast Irish village, the community is soon under the spell of this charismatic stranger from the Balkans. One woman in particular, Fidelma McBride, becomes enthralled in a fatal attraction that leads to unimaginable consequences. 'One of the most interesting and ambitious [books] ever written by an Irish author.' (Irish Times) 'One of the greatest Irish writers, of this or any era.' (Sunday Independent)

The BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls trilogy begins in August 2019. I thought of life's many bounties, to have known the extremities of joy and sorrow, love, crossed love and unrequited love, success and failure, fame and slaughter ... Born in Ireland in 1930 and driven into exile after publication of her controversial first novel, The Country Girls, Edna O'Brien is now hailed as one of the most majestic writers of her era - and Country Girl is her fabulous memoir. Born in rural Ireland, O'Brien weaves the tale of her life from convent school to elopement, divorce, single-motherhood, moving on to the wild parties of 1960s bohemian in London, encounters with Hollywood giants, pop stars, and literary titans, love and unrequited love, and glamorous trips to America as a celebrity writer. Country Girl is a rich and heady accounting of the events, people, emotions, and landscape that have forged a legendary author. O'Brien recasts her life with the imaginative alchemy of a poet, and the result is a memoir of sparkling wisdom and honesty. Edna O'Brien's stunning new novel Girl will be published by Faber in September 2019, available to pre-order now.

Lose yourself in the legendary Edna O'Brien's simmering tale of a woman rediscovering herself on the French Riviera ... '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 Separated from her husband and young son, Ellen leaves behind the loneliness of London for a new life of excitement and sexual freedom:a 'jaunt into iniquity' on the gorgeous French Riviera. However, she soon discovers that independence blurs into loneliness, especially when she receives some heart-breaking news ... Banned in several countries on first publication, Edna O'Brien's August is a Wicked Month is a shimmering, sensual tale of a woman rediscovering herself - and it feels just as glorious, radical, and escapist as today. 'O'Brien simply offers her characters and they come to us living.' V.S. Naipaul '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

A Times, Evening Standard and Financial Times Book of the Year

I was a girl once, but not any more . . .

A young woman, barely more than a girl herself, must learn to survive with a child of her own, in a world which seems entirely consumed by madness.

As she navigates a landscape of terrors and trials, can she find a place of safety within a society blinkered by mistrust and denial?

The BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls trilogy begins in August 2019. 'Edna O'Brien writes the most beautiful, aching stories of any writer, anywhere.' Alice Munro A woman walks the streets of Manhattan and contemplates with exquisite longing the precarious affair she has embarked on, amidst the grandeur and cacophony of the cityscape; a young Irish girl and her mother are thrilled to be invited to visit the glamorous Coughlan's but find - for all the promise of their green gorgette, silver shoes and fancy dinner parties - they leave disappointed; an Irishman in north London retraces his life as a young lad with his mates digging the streets and dreaming of the apocryphal gold, an outsider both in Ireland and England, yet he carries the lodestar of his native land. This classic collection glows with Edna O'Brien's trademark lyricism, powerful evocations of place, and heart-breaking insight into the desires and contradictions of humanity. Edna O'Brien's stunning new novel Girl will be published by Faber in September 2019, available to pre-order now.

I love fire. Fire is the colour of genius. In this audacious new work, Edna O'Brien gives voice to the women who were central to the life of James Joyce. 'James Joyce had been my ultimate hero for sixty years, but to paint the canvas of his life was daunting. Therefore I decided to depict him as seen by the key figures in his life - Mother, Wife, Mistress of a fleeting moment, his patron Harriet Weaver and his beloved Daughter Lucia, of whom he said her mind was but a transparent leaf away from his.' Written to celebrate the centenary of Ulysses, Joyce's Women premiered at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in September 2022. This revised edition includes changes made by the author during rehearsals and previews of the play's first production.

The BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls trilogy begins in August 2019. 'Edna O'Brien writes the most beautiful, aching stories of any writer, anywhere.' Alice Munro Spanning five decades of writing, and winning the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, The Love Object collects the most luminous stories by Edna O'Brien that have bewitched generation after generation. Here you will find tales of families, feuds, enchantment, despair, and the manifold bonds of love. There are stories about the tension between country and city life, the instinct towards escape and nostalgia for home; always crafted in shimmering prose. Her stunning new novel Girl will be published by Faber in September 2019, available to pre-order now.

The BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls trilogy begins in August 2019. After leaving for a religious community in Belgium, the young woman in A Pagan Place becomes lost in memories of her childhood in rural Ireland, reflecting on the rituals of village life, the people she encountered, the enchanting beauty of the landscape, the concept of home - and the shocking event that led to her departure ... Edna O'Brien's stunning new novel Girl will be published by Faber in September 2019, available to pre-order now.

Byron, more than any other poet, has come to personify the poet as rebel; imaginative and lawless, reaching beyond race, creed or frontier, his notorious flaws redeemed by a magnetism and ultimately a heroism that by ending in tragedy raised it and him from the particular to the universal. Everything about Lord George Gordon Byron was a paradox - insider and outsider, beautiful and deformed, serious and facetious, profligate but on occasion miserly, and possessed of a fierce intelligence trapped forever in a child's magic and malices. He was also a great poet, but as he reminded us, poetry is a distinct faculty and has little to do with the individual life of its creator. Edna O'Brien's exemplary biography focuses upon the diverse and colourful women in Byron's life. 'O'Brien charts the many loves of the notorious 19th-century poet's reckless life in immediate and candid prose' Sunday Telegraph 'Edna O'Brien has always had a gift for writing about affairs of the heart' Guardian 'There is much to enjoy in this idiosyncratic and highly readable account of the poet whose writing enthralled and whose actions appalled in equal measure' Independent

The BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls trilogy begins in August 2019. Edna O'Brien's wonderful, wild and moving novel shocked the nation on its publication in 1960. Adapted for the stage by the author, The Country Girls, the play, is a highly theatrical and free-flowing telling of this classic coming of age story. This new edition of The Country Girls was published to coincide with its UK premiere at Chichester Festival Theatre in June 2017. Edna O'Brien's stunning new novel Girl will be published by Faber in September 2019, available to pre-order now.

One of Ireland's greatest contemporary writers turns her attention to one of the country's greatest novelists: James Joyce - in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the iconic classic ULYSSES. 'As skilful, stylish and pacy as one would expect from so adept a novelist' Sunday Telegraph 'A delight from start to finish . . . achieves the near impossibility of giving a thoroughly fresh view of Joyce' Sunday Times 'Accessible and passionate, it is a book which should bring Joyce in all his glory and agony to a new and very wide audience' Irish Independent Edna O'Brien depicts James Joyce as a man hammered by Church, State and family, yet from such adversities he wrote works 'to bestir the hearts of men and angels'. The journey begins with Joyce the arrogant youth, his lofty courtship of Nora Barnacle, their hectic sexuality, children, wanderings, debt and profligacy, and Joyce's obsession with the city of Dublin, which he would re-render through his words. Nor does Edna O'Brien spare us the anger and isolation of Joyce's later years, when he felt that the world had turned its back on him, and she asks how could it be otherwise for a man who knew that conflict is the source of all creation.

I love fire. Fire is the colour of genius. In this audacious new work, Edna O'Brien gives voice to the women who were central to the life of James Joyce. 'James Joyce had been my ultimate hero for sixty years, but to paint the canvas of his life was daunting. Therefore I decided to depict him as seen by the key figures in his life - Mother, Wife, Mistress of a fleeting moment, his patron Harriet Weaver and his beloved Daughter Lucia, of whom he said her mind was but a transparent leaf away from his.' Written to celebrate the centenary of Ulysses, Joyce's Women premiered at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in September 2022.

As James Joyce was working on Finnegans Wake, he asked his friend T.S. Eliot to shepherd an early extract, simply known as 'Work in Progress' into print. This celebrated episode, Anna Livia Plurabelle, was the first part of Joyce's extraordinary text to be published in England, printed in pamphlet form in 1930. It became the best-known section of Finnegans Wake, and one of Joyce's favourites; revised and published independently more times than any other piece. This new edition in the Faber Modern Classics series includes a new foreword by Edna O'Brien. 'His writing is not about something; it is that something itself.' Samuel Beckett

The BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls trilogy begins in August 2019. Edna O'Brien's haunting spectre of a novel, Night, is narrated by one of her most memorable characters, Mary Hooligan. Lying on a four-poster bed, unable to sleep, she recounts her (mis)adventures, courtships, and sexual encounters of the most transgressive kind in a narrative voice of blistering, radical originality. Edna O'Brien's stunning new novel Girl will be published by Faber in September 2019, available to pre-order now.

"Country Girl is Edna O'Brien's exquisite account of her dashing, barrier-busting, up-and-down life."--National Public Radio
When Edna O'Brien's first novel, The Country Girls, was published in 1960, it so scandalized the O'Briens' local parish that the book was burned by its priest. O'Brien was undeterred and has since created a body of work that bears comparison with the best writing of the twentieth century. "Country Girl "brings us face-to-face with a life of high drama and contemplation.
Starting with O'Brien's birth in a grand but deteriorating house in Ireland, her story moves through convent school to elopement, divorce, single-motherhood, the wild parties of the '60s in London, and encounters with Hollywood giants, pop stars, and literary titans. There is love and unrequited love, and the glamour of trips to America as a celebrated writer and the guest of Jackie Onassis and Hillary Clinton. "Country Girl "is a rich and heady accounting of the events, people, emotions, and landscape that have imprinted upon and enhanced one lifetime.