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Biography
Irish

John McGahern

1934 — 2006

John McGahern was one of the finest Irish novelists and short-story writers of the twentieth century. His novels — particularly The Dark (1965), Amongst Women (1990), and That They May Face the Rising Sun (2002) — and his short stories explore the rhythms of rural Irish life with a quiet intensity and formal precision that place him in the company of Chekhov and William Trevor. Amongst Women was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and named the best Irish novel of the past fifty years in a 2006 poll.

Past sales0
PeriodContemporary
NationalityIrish
1. Biography

A short life of the author

John McGahern (1934–2006) was born on 12 November 1934 in Dublin and grew up in the west of Ireland. He trained as a teacher and taught at a primary school in Dublin until 1965, when he was dismissed from his teaching post after the banning of his second novel, The Dark — a scandal that encapsulated the repressive nature of mid-century Irish Catholic society.

Life and Career

The Barracks (1963) — his debut, about a woman dying of cancer in a Garda barracks in rural Ireland — won the AE Memorial Award and announced a writer of extraordinary sensitivity. The Dark (1965) — about a boy’s struggle against his abusive father and the suffocating expectations of the Catholic Church — was banned by the Irish Censorship Board for its sexual content.

After years of exile in London and the United States, McGahern returned to Ireland and settled on a farm in County Leitrim. Amongst Women (1990) — about Michael Moran, a former IRA fighter who rules his family with the same authority he once wielded in the War of Independence — is his masterpiece: a novel of extraordinary compression and power about patriarchal authority, family love, and the rhythms of rural life.

That They May Face the Rising Sun (2002, published as By the Lake in the US) — about the cycle of seasons in a lakeside farming community — is his most serene and accomplished work, a novel in which almost nothing happens and everything matters.

Major Works and Themes

McGahern wrote about the same subjects throughout his career: rural Ireland, the Catholic Church, family, death, the passage of time. His prose is measured, exact, and luminous. He writes about the repetitive texture of daily life — feeding cattle, cutting turf, attending Mass — with a concentration that reveals the beauty and pathos within the ordinary.

Key Works

  • The Barracks (1963)
  • The Dark (1965)
  • Amongst Women (1990) — Booker shortlist
  • That They May Face the Rising Sun (2002)
  • Memoir (2005)

Collecting McGahern

The Barracks (1963, Faber and Faber) — the debut — brings $100–$400. The Dark (1965, Faber) — the banned novel — brings $80–$300.

Amongst Women (1990, Faber) brings $30–$100. McGahern signed at Irish literary events. He died in 2006; signed copies are finite. Faber first editions are the standard collected form.