Jennifer Johnston

This article is about the Irish novelist. For the English opera singer, see Jennifer Johnston (mezzo-soprano). For those of a similar name, see Jennifer Johnson (disambiguation).

Jennifer Johnston (born 12 January 1930 in Dublin) is an Irish novelist. She has won a number of awards including the Whitbread Book Award for The Old Jest in 1979 and a Lifetime Achievement from the Irish Book Awards (2012). The Old Jest, a novel about the Irish War of Independence, was later made into a film called The Dawning, starring Anthony Hopkins, produced by Sarah Lawson and directed by Robert Knights.

Biography

Born in Dublin to the Irish actor/director Shelah Richards and the playwright Denis Johnston, a cousin of the late actress Geraldine Fitzgerald, via Fitzgerald's mother, Edith, Jennifer Johnston was educated at Trinity College Dublin, and currently lives near Dublin. She was born into the Church of Ireland and many of her novels deal with the fading of the Protestant Anglo-Irish ascendancy in the 20th century. She is a mother of four: Patrick, Sarah, Lucy, Malachi.

She is a member of Aosdána.

Awards and honours

• 2012 Irish Book Awards Lifetime Achievement Award
• 2006 Irish PEN Award
• 1989 Giles Cooper Awards for O Ananias, Azarias and Misael
• 1979 Whitbread Book Award for The Old Jest in 1979
• 1977 Booker Prize shortlist for Shadows on our Skin
• 1973 Authors' Club First Novel Award for The Captains and the Kings

List of works

Novels

• The Captains and the Kings (1972) winner of the Author's Club First Novel Award
• The Gates (1973)
• How Many Miles to Babylon? (1974)
• Shadows on Our Skin (1977) shortlisted for the Booker Prize
• The Old Jest (1979), winner of a Whitbread Book Award for 1979
• The Nightingale and Not the Lark (1980)
• The Christmas Tree (1981)
• The Railway Station Man (1985)
• Fool's Sanctuary (1988)
• The Invisible Worm (1992)
• The Illusionist (1995)
• Three Monologues: "Twinkletoes", "Musn't Forget High Noon", "Christine" (1995)
• The Desert Lullaby (1996)
• Finbar's Hotel, edited by Dermot Bolger (1997) (Contributor)
• Two Moons (1998)
• The Essential Jennifer Johnston (1999) (contains The Captains and the Kings, The Railway Station Man, and Fool's Sanctuary)
• Great Irish Stories of Murder and Mystery (2000) (Contributor)
• The Gingerbread Woman (2000)
• Mondschatten (2000)
• The Great Shark Escape (2001)
• This is not a Novel (2002)
• Grace and Truth (2005)
• The Myth of The Bonbons: Exposing the Life of a Full-Time Mom (2006)
• Foolish Mortals (2007)
• Truth or Fiction (2009)
• Shadowstory (2011)
• Fathers and Son (2012)
• A Sixpenny Song (2013)

Plays

• The Nightingale and Not the Lark (1981)
• Indian Summer (1983)
• Andante un Poco Mosso, in The Best Short Plays 1983, (1983)
• The Porch (1986)
• The Desert Lullaby: A Play in Two Acts (1996)
• The Christmas Tree: A Play in Two Acts (2015)

See also

• List of winners and shortlisted authors of the Booker Prize for Fiction

External links

• Jennifer Johnston at British Council: Literature
• Jennifer Johnston's works provides a decidedly pejorative view of Johnston's works
• Works by Jennifer Johnston at Open Library
• Jennifer Johnston (1930- )
• Jennifer Johnston on Amazon.com