Aidan Higgins – författare

Considered to be one of the best Irish writers of the twentieth century, Aidan Higgins has earned a reputation throughout Europe as an unusual and astringent prose stylist. This omnibus of selected short fiction is the perfect introduction to the talents of this Irish successor to James Joyce and Samuel Beckett (although Higgins's work is perhaps more reminiscent of his Welsh contemporary Dylan Thomas), and displays Higgins's warmth of language and character. From a melancholy tale of suicide in "North Salt Holdings" to a colorful depiction of J. J. Catchpole's escapades in "Catchpole, " Higgins builds his characters into touching failures who both attract and repulse the reader.

"A bloody marvelous book." Harold Pinter

In addition to his novels and stories, Aidan Higgins--one of Ireland's most respected contemporary writers--has written a large body of criticism. Windy Arbours includes pieces written between 1970-1990 and is the first collection of his reviews to be published. Incredibly well-read, Higgins covers writers from around the world, from relatively well-known authors such as William Faulkner, Djuna Barnes, and Jorge Luis Borges, to more obscure writers such as Ralph Cusack and Dorothy Nelson. Serving as an informative guidebook about contemporary fiction, Higgins's criticism is always insightful, and oftentimes entertainingly acerbic.

Perversely, but perhaps appropriately, Aidan Higgins--one of the few contemporary writers worthy of comparison with Beckett and Joyce, now celebrating his 85th year--has chosen to wait until his sight has nearly left him to assemble this collection of visual treats. A commonplace book of anecdotes and cartoons--the latter never before published, though familiar to all of Higgins's correspondents from the margins of his letters and postcards--"Blind Man's Bluff" is a compendium of tart and comic insights into sight itself, as well as other varied indignities: personal, historical, and literary.

An eminently poetic book, Langrishe, Go Down (Higgins's first novel) traces the fall of the Langrishes—a once wealthy, highly respected Irish family—through the lives of their four daughters, especially the youngest, Imogen, whose love affair with a self-centered German scholar resonates throughout the book. Their relationship, told in lush, erotic, and occasionally melancholic prose, comes to represent not only the invasion and decline of this insular family, but the decline of Ireland and Western Europe as a whole in the years preceding World War II. In the tradition of great Irish writing, Higgins's prose is a direct descendent from that of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, and nowhere else in his mastery of the language as evident as in Langrishe, Go Down, which the Irish Times applauded as "the best Irish novel since At Swim-Two-Birds and the novels of Beckett."

Here is the great Irish novel of Berlin, way back before the Wall came down. Dallan Weaver, a writer and professor who’s been fêted and flattered but has seen better days, has come to the great divided city as a guest of DILDO (Deutsche-Internationale Literatur-Dienst Organization). On arriving, Weaver’s life immediately begins to fall apart. Women fight over him. He is not always in the soberest state of mind. Moving from relatively conventional narrative to deliriously long lists, incorporating everything from children’s drawings to minute recollections of dreams, Lions of the Grunewald is—in the author’s own words—a “missionary stew,” marvelously served up in Aidan Higgins’s inimitable style.

"A bloody marvelous book." Harold Pinter

Opening with a quote from Richard Brautigan--"I've been examining half-scraps of my childhood. They are pieces of distant life that have no form or meaning"--Scenes from a Receding Past constructs the adolescence and early adulthood of Dan Ruttle out of a variety of scenes and reminiscences about his life in Ireland, his time in a Catholic school, his first sexual experiences, and his brother's mental breakdown. The second half of the book centers around his relationship with his future wife Olivia, her past, and her former lovers. Calling to mind Joyce's Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man for Dan Ruttle's love-hate relationship with Ireland and the stylistic innovations employed by Higgins, Scenes from a Receding Past is a masterpiece from one of Ireland's greatest contemporary writers.

In addition to his novels and stories, Aidan Higgins--one of Ireland's most respected contemporary writers--has written a large body of criticism. Windy Arbours includes pieces written between 1970-1990 and is the first collection of his reviews to be published. Incredibly well-read, Higgins covers writers from around the world, from relatively well-known authors such as William Faulkner, Djuna Barnes, and Jorge Luis Borges, to more obscure writers such as Ralph Cusack and Dorothy Nelson. Serving as an informative guidebook about contemporary fiction, Higgins's criticism is always insightful, and oftentimes entertainingly acerbic.

During the five years of their adulterous affair, Finn Fitzgerald and Elin Marstrander spend only 47 days and nights together. At each of their meetings--in Spain or London, or on the tiny island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea, which serves as their last refuge--they try to conjure a reality that will correspond to that of the passionate letters they exchange while apart. Elin, a Danish poet, and Fitz, an Irish novelist, send each other beautiful, loving words, as well as evocative jabs of cruelty, often in the same letter. In the whirling world of their writing they attempt to enjoy their love in the calm they can't find in their daily lives. But as reality--their lovers and their children; their failures and regrets--creeps in, their relationship inevitably crumbles: "The dream ends."

Though best known as the author of a series of brilliant novels, here Higgins turns his writerly gifts to work for the radio.

Aidan Higgins's great novel has long been unavailable, and is here reissued in a new and revised edition. "Balcony of Europe" tells the story of a young Jewish wife from San Francisco and a middle-aged Irish painter who meet in a village on the coast of Spain, beginning an affair during the coldest European winter in two hundred years--all the while surrounded by a cast of characters as bizarre and hilarious as they are, finally, touching. Lyrical and humorous, heartbreaking and hopeful, "Balcony of Europe "is Aidan Higgins's crowning achievement.