Visionary storyteller amongst the greats

IRELAND and Europe lost a world-class writer yesterday with the death of novelist John McGahern.

His sudden death in the Mater Hospital came after a long battle with cancer, the same disease that claimed his mother Susan, to whom he was so close. Her death, when McGahern was almost 10, left an indelible mark on the man and his work.

McGahern, who was aged 71, rose to prominence over four decades ago with the publication of his first novel The Barracks, in 1963. In it, the central character Elizabeth Regan anticipated her own death by cancer, a clear echo of McGahern’s traumatic loss of his mother.