Liam OFlaherty

Liam O’Flaherty

It is a surprise every time!  I always forget what a wonderful writer O’Flaherty was.  Rereading some of his short stories now, his mastery of the short story form strikes me forcefully once again, but mastery of form would be nothing without the human insight and familiarity with nature which lie at the heart of all his stories. He clearly perceived both the grandeur and baseness of human nature and portrayed them starkly in language which is evocative and rich.  In many places the parallels with the Brazilian writer Graciliano Ramos are quite remarkable but I suppose that, despite the differences and the distance which separated them,  they were both writing fundamentally about the same thing and from a similar perspective. See “Vidas Secas”.