Edna O’Brien, one of Ireland’s most famous authors, died on Saturday at the age of 93 after a long illness. “Our thoughts are with her family and friends, especially her sons Marcus and Carlo,” said the joint statement from her agent and publisher on her death.

Irish President Michael D. Higgins praised the late novelist as a “fearless teller of truth” and praised his “moral courage in confronting Irish society with realities that have long been ignored and suppressed.”

For more than half a century—and in dozens of novels and short story collections—O’Brien’s writing explored lost love and the dark contradictions in women’s lives.

Her explicit prose and depictions of female sexuality were highly controversial in Ireland and the subject of personal attacks, although she was celebrated outside her home country.

The author’s first novel, The Country Girls, was published in 1960 and was about two Irish girls who rebelled against their Roman Catholic upbringing. This and other O’Brien titles were banned in Ireland with the approval of the Catholic Church.

Attitudes towards O’Brien began to change in Ireland in the early 2000s. In 2001 she received the Irish PEN Lifetime Achievement Award and in 2006 the Ulysses Medal. In 2015 she was awarded the country’s highest literary honour, the Saoi of Aosdána.

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