Sean O'Casey & Edna O'Brien Collection 3 Books Set - Fiction - Paperback

Titles in this set:

1. Three Dublin Plays
2. Saints and Sinners
3. The Love Object

Description:

Three Dublin Plays
Three early plays by Sean O'Casey-arguably his three greatest-demonstrate vividly O'Casey's ability to convey the reality of life and the depth of human emotion, specifically in Dublin before and during the Irish civil war of 1922-23, but, truly, throughout the known universe.

In mirroring the lives of the Dublin poor, from the tenement dwellers in The Shadow of a Gunman and Juno and the Paycock to the bricklayer, street vendor, and charwoman in The Plough and the Stars, Sean O'Casey conveys with urgency and eloquence the tiny details that create a total character as well as the terrors, large and small, that the constant threat of political violence inevitably brings.

As Seamus Heaney has written, "O'Casey's characters are both down to earth and larger than life . . . His democratic genius was at one with his tragic understanding, and his recoil from tyranny and his compassion for the oppressed were an essential - as opposed to a moral and thematic - part of his art."

Saints and Sinners
A woman walks the streets of Manhattan and contemplates with exquisite longing the precarious affair she has embarked on, amidst the grandeur and cacophony of the cityscape; a young Irish girl and her mother are thrilled to be invited to visit the glamorous Coughlan's but find - for all the promise of their green gorgette, silver shoes and fancy dinner parties - they leave disappointed; an Irishman in north London retraces his life as a young lad with his mates digging the streets and dreaming of the apocryphal gold, an outsider both in Ireland and England, yet he carries the lodestar of his native land.

This classic collection glows with Edna O'Brien's trademark lyricism, powerful evocations of place, and heart-breaking insight into the desires and contradictions of humanity.

The Love Object
Spanning five decades of writing, and winning the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, The Love Object collects the most luminous stories by Edna O'Brien that have bewitched generation after generation. Here you will find tales of families, feuds, enchantment, despair, and the manifold bonds of love. There are stories about the tension between country and city life, the instinct towards escape and nostalgia for home; always crafted in shimmering prose.