Dog Days

Aidan Higgins was born in 1927. Langrishe Go Down, his first novel, won the James Tait Black memorial Prize and the Irish Academy of Letters Award, and was later filmed for television with a screenplay by Harold Pinter. His second novel, Balcony of Europe, was shortlisted for the 1972 Booker Prize. The novel Lions of the Grunewald appeared in 1993 and a collection of shorter fiction, Flotsam and jetsam, in 1996. Donkey's Years and Dog Days were the first two volumes of the Higgins Bestiary which concludes with this volume.

'Tired of walking in the dream I have returned to the country where I was born half a century ago' - The Higgins family is now dispersed; the third son of four brothers is himself the father of three sons in a family also dispersed, and our author 'looking for the quietness that Julian Sorel found in prison. ' he finds this problematical peace, sharing a bungalow near Brittas in Co Wicklow in an awkward two year tenancy with a school mistress with back back trouble. DOG DAYS is an account of those two years, with flashbacks to previous diaries that reveal a murky Dublin of whores and Provo killing, a raindrenched Connemara.

Flotsam And Jetsam

KEY POINTS: * One of Ireland's greatest living writers. * Praise for Donkey's Years: * 'The best book since Langrishe. It's absolutely wonderful. He is still the best English language prose stylist in the country' Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill. * 'Donkey's Years must rank as one of the finest books in English since the war' - The Phoenix

The stories have an indolent strength, a sombreness, a sense of necessity.

In you, together with the beginner, is the old hand.

THE BOOK: Flotsam and Jetsam is a selection of prose, some previously unpublished, written over the last thirty five years by one of Ireland's greatest writers. It includes work adapted from earlier novels, short stories and radio plays.

Donkeys Years

Opening with a child's-eye view, [Donkey's Years] incorporates local history and topography, evoking with vivid, physical detail the voices of his playmates, the smells, colours and sounds of this peaceful corner of Ireland in the 1930s and '40s ... It comes as no surprise that Aidan Higgins ... has written an autobiography that has the texture of a novel

Leaving down Donkey's Years at four in the morning after one straight reading I felt exhilarated ... Read it and see. Few books inspire like this'

The best book since Langrishe. It's absolutely wonderful, He is still (and always was) the best English-language prose stylist in the country'

Donkey's Years must rank as one of the finest books in English since the War

'Opening with a child's-eye view, [Donkey's Years] incorporates local history and topography, evoking with vivid, physical detail the voices of his playmates, the smells, colours and sounds of this peaceful corner of Ireland in the 1930s and '40s...It comes as no surprise that Aidan Higgins...has written an autobiography that has the texture of a novel' Irish Times 
 
'Leaving down Donkey's Years at four in the morning after one straight reading I felt exhilarated...Read it and see. Few books inspire like this' Dermot Healy 
 
'The best book since Langrishe. It's absolutely wonderful. He is still (and always was) the best English-language prose stylist in the country' Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill 
 
'Donkey's Years must rank as one of the finest books in English since the War' The Phoenix

Aidan Higgins

Donkey's Years and Dog Days were the first two volumes of these remarkable memoirs, of which The Whole Hog now completes the Higgins Bestiary. This spirited and quirky penman has always set himself apart form the general grind of Irish writing and its set themes, to run along the line of the exposed nerve-system.No other Irish writer has been so obsessed with the terrain inconnu of lost or thwarted love as this odd-man-out. From salad love with Molly Cushen, to Philippa Phillips in the dunes, to a young American wife in Spain at the time of the Bay of Pigs, or a divorcée in Copenhagen, a tax inspectress in London, the Jacaranda Street tease in Johannesburg, the mirth is barely contained

Aidan Higgins

Books by Aidan Higgins

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter