John McGahern Boeken

McGahern's command of the short story places him among the finest practitioners of the form, in a lineage that runs from Chekhov through Joyce and the Anglo-American masters.

In them his canon of great writers - Tolstoy, Chekhov, James, Proust and Joyce - is cited many times, with deep and subtle appreciation. His interventions on issues he felt strongly about - sectarianism, women's rights, the power of the church in Ireland - are lucid and far-sighted.

William Stoner wordt aan het einde van de negentiende eeuw geboren als zoon van een arme boerenfamilie. Tot groot verdriet van zijn ouders kiest hij voor een carrière als docent Engels. Hij wijdt zijn leven aan de literatuur en aan de liefde - en faalt op beide fronten. Zijn huwelijk met een vrouw uit een gegoede familie vervreemdt hem verder van zijn ouders, zijn carrière verloopt moeizaam en zijn vrouw en dochter keren zich tegen hem. Een nieuwe liefdesrelatie wordt verbroken om een schandaal op de universiteit te voorkomen. Stoner sterft uiteindelijk in anonimiteit, zoals ook zijn hele leven zich in de marge heeft afgespeeld. --back cover

This is the story of John McGahern's childhood; of his mother's death, his father's anger and bafflement, and his own discovery of literature and his ambition to become a writer. Memoir includes McGahern's memories of Dublin in the 1960s, his time as a schoolteacher, and his sacking for writing a banned book (his second novel, The Dark). It ends with his return to live in Leitrim with his wife and the death of his father, difficult to the last.

This remarkable volume brings together all of John McGahern's short fiction, fully revised, in a definitive text. McGahern has long been recognized as a contemporary master of the short story; The Collected Stories confirms his reputation as Ireland's leading prose writer.

The stories in High Ground are set in ordinary places, in the streets and suburbs and dancehalls of Dublin, the small towns and fields of the midlands, the big houses of the beleaguered Anglo-Irish in the aftermath of their ascendancy, the whole changing country propelled in a generation from the nineteenth into the late twentieth century.

Exploring the author's formative years, this memoir delves into his childhood experiences in the Irish countryside and the early influences that shaped his writing career. Through vivid storytelling, it reflects on the complexities of family life, the beauty of rural landscapes, and the struggles of growing up in a changing world, offering a poignant glimpse into the roots of his literary journey.

John McGahern is widely considered to be one of Ireland's greatest writers, with fans including John Updike, Hilary Mantel, Colm Tóibín and John Banville. Often hailed as his greatest work, Amongst Women is a poignant novel of family and togetherness.Once an officer in the Irish War for Independence, Moran is now a widower, eking out a living on a small farm where he raises his two sons and three daughters. Adrift from the structure and security of the military, he keeps control by binding his family close to him. But as his children grow older and seek independence, and as the passing years bring with them bewildering change, Moran struggles to find a balance between love and tyranny. 'A masterpiece . . . It is the sort of book which you can give anyone of any age and know that they will be changed by it.' Colm Tóibín

Set in rural Ireland, John McGahern's second novel is about adolescence and a guilty, yet uncontrollable sexuality that is contorted and twisted by both puritanical state religion and a strange, powerful and ambiguous relationship between son and widower father. číst celé

This novel, McGahern's first, is a tragicomedy centred on a lonely woman who marries into the enclosed Irish village of her upbringing. The children are not hers, her husband is straining to escape the servile security of the police force, and her life seems to be losing all sense of purpose.