Aidan Higgins

An eminently poetic book, Langrishe, Go Down (Higgins's first novel) 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-centred German scholar resonates throughout the book. Their relationship, told in lush, erotic, and occasionally melancholic prose, comes to represent not only the...

Here is the great Irish novel of Berlin, way back before the Wall came down. Dallan Weaver, a writer and professor who's been feted and flattered but has seen better days, has come to the great divided city as a guest of DILDO (Deutsche-Internationale Literatur-Dienst Organization). On arriving, Weaver's life immediately begins to fall apart. Women fight over him. He...