Memoir

John McGahern

John McGahern was born in Dublin in 1934 and brought up in the West of Ireland. He was a graduate of University College, Dublin. He worked as a Primary School teacher and held various academic posts at universities in Britain, Ireland and America. In the opinion of the Observer, John McGahern was 'Ireland's greatest living novelist'. He was the author of six highly acclaimed novels and four collections of short stories, and was the recipient of numerous awards and honours, including a Society of Authors Travelling Scholarship, the American-Irish Award, the Prix Etrangère Ecureuil and the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Amongst Women, which won both the GPA and the Irish Times Award, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and made into a four-part BBC television series. His work has appeared in anthologies and has been translated into many languages. His last book, Memoir, was published in 2005.

Fellow novelist Katharine McMahon on John McGahern...

I am part Irish, and there was much in Amongst Women that appealed to the bit of me that responds to that - the Irish Catholicism, the old patriarchal family structure and the closeness of family, the beauty and harshness of the countryside, and how an intimate story can be told that encompasses a sweeping political backdrop.