Called “arguably the most important Irish novelist since Samuel Beckett” by The Guardian, John McGahern (1934–2006) was a writer and novelist who has had an immense influence on contemporary writing both in his home country and abroad. He wrote six novels during his lifetime, the last being That They May Face the Rising Sun (published as By the Lake in the U.S.), which won Novel of the Year at the 2003 Irish Book Awards. Anne Enright is the author of several books of fiction, most recently the novel The Wren, the Wren. She received the Irish PEN Award for Literature in 2017 and served as the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction from 2015 to 2018.
“Clear and precise, rhythmic without being insistent, and despite the cynicism of the imagery, strangely tender, the writing achieves a formal elegance that sacralizes its sacrilege.” —Sam Sacks, Harpers