Kate O'Brien

Kate O’Brien (1897–1974) was the author of nine novels, two of which – Mary Lavelle (1936) and The Land of Spices (1941) – were banned in Ireland, the latter on the basis of a single suggestive sentence. No other Irish novelist of the century wrote with as much authority and subtlety about women, often without men: at home and abroad, in convents, and sometimes in love.