Hello
Gentle Reader
The
past couple of years have been quite generous for the Irish writer, Edna O’Brien.
In two-thousand and eighteen she received the PEN/Nabokov Award, for her lifetime’s
achievement of work on the stage of international literature. Now, once again,
the Irish Grand Dame of Letters has received another accolade recognizing her potent,
poignant, and ever presently preoccupied body of work, this time: the David
Cohen Prize.
The
David Cohen Prize is often rumored to being a precursor to the Nobel Prize for
Literature, much in the same fashion as: The Franz Kafka Prize or Neustadt
International Prize for Literature. Though in the same fashion as the Neustadt
International Prize for Literature, the David Cohen Prize has been established
as a competitor to the Nobel Prize for Literature, though more exclusive for
writers heralding from the United Kingdom and Ireland. This being said previous
winners of the award included Nobel Laureates: V.S. Naipaul, Harold Pinter, and
Doris Lessing (pre-Nobel) as well as Seamus Heaney (post-Nobel).
Edna
O’Brien has been understated and appreciative towards the award. When inquired
about the potential of a Nobel in her future, the eighty-eight year old brushed
off such notions as discussions lost in the ethereal realm of the intangible
future.
In
receiving this award, Edna O’Brien’s reputation as one of the most powerful and
potent voices in Irish literature is still relevant, as she continues to write.
Edna O’Brien has proven that she is not a one trick pony of sexual frankness
and shock value, with her debut in the nineteen-sixties; but a well-weathered,
rounded, and poignant observer of the female condition through the ages,
crafting deft psychological portraits of the woman psyche as influenced and
shaped by external factors, and of course their relationship with men.
Congratulations
to Edna O’Brien!
Thank-you
For Reading Gentle Reader
Take
Care
And
As Always
Stay
Well Read
M.
Mary
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