Edna O'Brien On 6 Decades Of Writing 'Very Difficult Stories' About Women
In Girl, a young woman in Nigeria is abducted by Boko Haram — and that's just the beginning. For nearly 60 years, its Irish author has written about women "both as victims and as fighters, combined."
I was a girl once, but not any more.
That's the first sentence of Edna O'Brien's new novel. It goes on:
I smell. Blood dried and crusted all over me, and my wrapper in shreds. My insides, a morass.
As you're already gathering, the novel can be hard to read. It is a fictional portrait of the girls abducted by Boko Haram in Nigeria five years ago: their kidnapping, their suffering, how many of them were raped and forced to marry. It may not be appropriate for everyone.
