John McGahern Bücher

»Ich habe mich in ihn verliebt.« Anna Gavalda  ›Stoner‹ ist einer der großen vergessenen Romane der amerikanischen Literatur. John Williams erzählt das Leben eines Mannes, der, als Sohn armer Farmer geboren, schließlich seine Leidenschaft für Literatur entdeckt und Professor wird – es ist die Geschichte eines genügsamen Lebens, das wenig Spuren hinterließ. Ein Roman über die Freundschaft, die Ehe, ein Campus-Roman, ein Gesellschaftsroman, schließlich ein Roman über die Arbeit. Über die harte, erbarmungslose Arbeit auf den Farmen; über die Arbeit, die einem eine zerstörerische Ehe aufbürdet, über die Mühe, in einem vergifteten Haushalt mit geduldiger Einfühlung eine Tochter großzuziehen und an der Universität oft teilnahmslosen Studenten die Literatur nahebringen zu wollen. ›Stoner‹ ist kein Liebesroman, aber doch und vor allem ein Roman über die Liebe: über die Liebe zur Poesie, zur Literatur, und auch über die romantische Liebe. Es ist ein Roman darüber, was es heißt, ein Mensch zu sein.

This is the story of John McGahern's childhood; of his mother's death, his father's anger and bafflement, and his own discovery of literature and his ambition to become a writer. Memoir includes McGahern's memories of Dublin in the 1960s, his time as a schoolteacher, and his sacking for writing a banned book (his second novel, The Dark). It ends with his return to live in Leitrim with his wife and the death of his father, difficult to the last.

John McGahern is widely considered to be one of Ireland's greatest writers, with fans including John Updike, Hilary Mantel, Colm Tóibín and John Banville. Often hailed as his greatest work, Amongst Women is a poignant novel of family and togetherness.Once an officer in the Irish War for Independence, Moran is now a widower, eking out a living on a small farm where he raises his two sons and three daughters. Adrift from the structure and security of the military, he keeps control by binding his family close to him. But as his children grow older and seek independence, and as the passing years bring with them bewildering change, Moran struggles to find a balance between love and tyranny. 'A masterpiece . . . It is the sort of book which you can give anyone of any age and know that they will be changed by it.' Colm Tóibín

This novel, McGahern's first, is a tragicomedy centred on a lonely woman who marries into the enclosed Irish village of her upbringing. The children are not hers, her husband is straining to escape the servile security of the police force, and her life seems to be losing all sense of purpose.

Considered by many to be the finest Irish writer now working in prose, John McGahern's That They May Face the Rising Sun vividly brings to life a whole world and its people with insight and humour and deep sympathy. Joe and Kate Ruttledge have come to Ireland from London in search of a different life. In passages of beauty and truth, the drama of a year in their lives and those of the memorable characters that move about them unfolds through the action, the rituals of work, religious observances and play. By the novel's close we feel that we have been introduced, with deceptive simplicity, to a complete representation of existence - an enclosed world has been transformed into an Everywhere. 'It is a simple and ordinary story, calmly, wryly crafted with subtle detail - and therein lies McGahern's genius. As sharply, brilliantly observed as any he has written . . . McGahern, a supreme chronicler of the ordinary . . . has created a novel that lives and breathes as convincingly as the characters who inhabit it.' Irish Times