By Aidan Higgins
ISBN: 9781628973921
Publication Date: 11/29/2022
An eminently poetic book, Langrishe, Go Down traces the fall of the Langrishes—a once wealthy, highly respected Irish family—through the lives of their four daughters, especially the youngest, Imogen, whose love affair with a self-centered German scholar resonates throughout the book. Their relationship, told in lush, erotic, and occasionally melancholic prose, comes to represent not only the invasion and decline of this insular family, but the decline of Ireland and Western Europe as a whole in the years preceding World War II. In the tradition of great Irish writing, Higgins's prose is a direct descendent from that of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, and nowhere else in his mastery of the language as evident as in Langrishe, Go Down.
Other Books by Aidan Higgins
Aidan Higgins: Fragility of Form
Reviews
"The best Irish novel since At Swim-Two-Birds and the novels of Beckett." —Irish Times
"The ferocious and dazzling prose of Aidan Higgins, the pure architecture of his sentences, takes the breath out of you. He is one of our great writers." —Annie Proulx
"Langrishe, Go Down is a wonderful piece of writing . . . Faulkner never listened more carefully to every creak of a decaying mansion than Higgins does to Springfield House." —New York Times
Biographical Information
Aidan Higgins (1927-2015) was an Irish writer of short stories, novels, travel pieces, radio plays, and literary criticism. His books include Scenes from a Receding Past, Bornholm Night-Ferry, Balcony of Europe, and Langrishe, Go Down, which was adapted for television by Harold Pinter.