Aidan Higgins

Born in Celbridge, Co. Kildare, Aidan Higgins has spent extensive periods abroad in Germany and Spain, South Africa and North and South Rhodesia. His first collection of stories, Felo De Se, was published by Calder in 1960, following Samuel Beckett's commendation. Higgins' first novel, Langrishe Go Down (1966), won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Irish Academy of Letters Award, and was made into a film based on a screenplay by Harold Pinter. Later novels include Balcony of Europe (1972), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Scenes from a Receding Past (1977), Bornholm Night-Ferry (1983) and Lions of the Grunewald (1993). Higgins' collected stories, Flotsam and Jetsam, followed in 1996. He has also written three volumes of autobiography, Donkey's Years (1996), Dog Days (1998) and The Whole Hog (2000), subsequently published in one volume as A Bestiary (2004). A member of Aosdána, Higgins was conferred with an honorary doctorate of letters by the National University of Ireland, Cork, in 2001. He now lives in Kinsale, Co. Cork.