Recollection is not something that I can summon up, it simply comes and I am the servant of it.

She has received numerous awards for her works including a Kingsley Amis Award in 1962 (for The Country Girls) the Yorkshire Post Book Award in 1970 (for A Pagan Place) and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 1990 for Lantern Slides. The book was banned burned and denounced from the pulpit and O'Brien left Ireland behind. D.

Edna O'Brien (born 15 December 1930) is an Irish novelist playwright poet and short story writer whose works often revolve around the inner feelings of women and their problems in relating to men and to society as a whole. Her first novel The Country Girls is often credited with breaking silence on sexual matters and social issues during a repressive period in Ireland following World War II. She now lives in London.