Donkeys Years

Donkeys Years

Summary

'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

Reviews

  • 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

About the author

Aidan Higgins

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.
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