Bestiary Cl

Originally published as three separate volumes'” Donkey's Years, Dog Days , and The Whole Hog'”A Bestiary relates the life and times of one of Ireland's greatest contemporarywriters. As in his fiction, Higgins's writing exquisitely capturessights, smells, and emotions, detailing his life from childhood inCounty Kildare before his family's economic decline, to his mother'sslow, agonizing death; from his travels in England and South Africa, tohis two years spent living with a schoolmistress after the end of hisfirst marriage. In writing his memoirs Higgins exposes the sources for many of his best novels, from Scenes from a Receding Past to Langrishe, Go Down , giving the reader a rare look into the "story behind the story." But A Bestiary is more than a factual expose'”this collection of memoirs is constructedin a novelistic way, creating a work of literary art out of a life.

Aidan Higgins is the author of more than a dozen books, including Langrishe, Go Down, which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Irish Academy of Letters Award, and was filmed for television with a screenplay by Harold Pinter. His novel Balcony of Europe was shortlisted for the 1972 Booker Prize