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BBC Radio 4 Extra

Your digital radio entertainment station showcasing the best in comedy and drama

Your digital radio entertainment station showcasing the best in comedy and drama. With recent favourites from BBC Radio 4.

Book of the Week

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Serialised book readings, featuring works from various genres

Serialised book readings, featuring works of non-fiction, biography, autobiography, travel, diaries, essays, humour and history

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Book of the Week: Edna O'Brien - Country Girl

Book of the Week: Edna O'Brien - Country Girl: Episode 4

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Factual: Life Stories

Country Girl

Episode 4

Edna O'Brien - Country Girl

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, Edna O'Brien - Country Girl, Episode 4

Enjoying literary success in 60s London, Irish novelist Edna O'Brien continues her astonishingly honest memoir.

The great Irish writer, Edna O'Brien, whose controversial 1960 novel brought her both literary fame and notoriety back home, reads her astonishingly honest memoir of a literary life of high drama.

Born in 1930 into a strict Catholic family in rural County Clare, O'Brien rejected her background in search of literary life in Dublin, but found herself transported to London, unhappily married with two young children. The publication of The Country Girls brought her literary stardom in sixties London, but also notoriety back home, and a bitter end to her marriage. But along the way there were also encounters with Hollywood giants, pop stars and literary titans, as well as the inevitable regrets and sorrows.

In today's episode: Edna enjoys literary success in Sixties London.

Author: Since her debut novel The Country Girls, Edna O'Brien has written more than twenty works of fiction along with a biography of James Joyce and Lord Byron. 

Abridger: Miranda Davies

Producer: Justine Willett.

BBC Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Edna O'Brien, whose controversial 1960 novel The Country Girls brought her both literary fame and notoriety, reads her memoir

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