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Anne Enright

Moderated by Madeleine Gray

10 March 2024

In the Utzon Room

Sydney Opera House Presents

Talks and Ideas

The Booker Prize-winning author Anne Enright’s latest novel, The Wren, The Wren, considers the legacy of terrible cruelty within one family. How to live with betrayal and loneliness, yet still love those close to you? Join us for this spellbinding conversation with one of Ireland’s and the world’s greatest living writers about a book that is widely considered one of her finest yet. 

One of the great living writers on the subject of family.

The New York Times

A meditation on love, family, trauma and resilience

Parents. Children. Siblings. Spouses. The Irish author Anne Enright is an absolute expert in writing about family. Throughout her twelve books, she has considered fraught familial interconnectedness from many angles. Her latest, The Wren, The Wren (2023), follows mother and daughter duo Carmel and Nell, two women deeply impacted by the brutal actions of Carmel's famous father, a poet. The protagonists contend with the risks of relationships: co-dependency, cruelty, betrayal, and abandonment. 

This multigenerational novel delves into the inheritance of trauma, the resilience of women, and the power of love in its manifold forms. Many have hailed this book as her finest. Don't miss this long-reaching conversation with one of Ireland's finest authors. 

Presented by Sydney Opera House

 

Enright is a bravura stylist who scores the various voices with a delicate ear for the different intonations of loss and longing. All the vividness of characterisation that her readers have come to expect is here, and so is the wry, almost surreal wit.

Fintan O’Toole, The Guardian

Other information

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