Ireland’s greatest living writer is as ambitious as ever. She talks about working in Nigeria, coping with critics – and one final novel
Most people approaching their 90th birthday would be forgiven for deciding that, whatever their work, enough was enough and it was time to relax.
Most people, however, are not Edna O’Brien. Ireland’s greatest living writer has over the past week delivered this year’s TS Eliot lecture on Eliot and James Joyce for Dublin’s Abbey Theatre – Covid-19 meant that it was recorded at the Irish Embassy in London and will be broadcast on her birthday – and won the South Bank Sky Arts award for literature for her recent novel, Girl, a harrowing, heartbreaking tale about the girls kidnapped in Nigeria by Boko Haram. On Tuesday she celebrates her birthday.
