The Wren, The Wren

The Wren, The Wren

The Booker Prize-winning author

Summary

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024
WINNER OF THE WRITERS PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024

Carmel had been alone all her life. The baby knew this. They looked at each other, and all of time was there. The baby knew how vast her mother's loneliness had been.

‘A magnificent novel’ SALLY ROONEY

Nell is a young woman with adventure on her mind. As she sets out into the world, she finds her family history hard to escape. For her mother, Carmel, Nell’s leaving home opens a space in her heart, where the turmoil of a lifetime begins to churn. Over them both falls the long shadow of Carmel’s famous father, an Irish poet of beautiful words and brutal actions.

From our greatest chronicler of family life, The Wren, The Wren is a story of the love that can unite us, and the individual acts that threaten this vital bond.

‘A triumph…treasure it’ SUNDAY TIMES

‘One of the great living writers on the subject of family’ NEW YORK TIMES

‘A must-read’ MARGARET ATWOOD (on Twitter)

‘Might just be Anne Enright’s best yet’ LOUISE KENNEDY

*A SUNDAY TIMES, OBSERVER, GUARDIAN, TLS, HARPER’S BAZAAR, NEW STATESMAN, THE NEW YORKER, TIME AND WASHINGTON POST BOOK OF THE YEAR*

Reviews

  • The Wren, The Wren is a magnificent novel. Anne Enright's stylistic brilliance seems to put the reader directly in touch with her characters and the rich territory of their lives
    Sally Rooney, author of NORMAL PEOPLE

About the author

Anne Enright

Anne Enright was born in Dublin, where she now lives and works. She has written two collections of stories, published together as Yesterday's Weather, one book of non-fiction, Making Babies, and seven novels, including The Gathering, which won the 2007 Man Booker Prize, The Forgotten Waltz, which was awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and The Green Road, which was the Bord Gáis Energy Novel of the Year and won the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. In 2015 she was appointed as the first Laureate for Irish Fiction, and in 2018 she received the Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Contribution to Irish Literature. She is also the recipient of the 2022 Irish Book Awards Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2024 Writers' Prize for Fiction.
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