For some Irish writers, their motherland is still the sow that devours her farrow. The formal issues of modernism, so at odds with the curious religious and social balances of Irish society, still remain as issues for those who, even in the latter portion of the twentieth century, leave home only to evoke images and ideas of Ireland in all they write. Educated at James Joyce's Clongowes, protege of Samuel Beckett, Aidan Higgins maintains a line and style of writing most of his countrymen have chosen to abandon.

Aidan Higgins was born in Celbridge, Country Kildare, a place that recurs in his novels, to Bartholomew Joseph and Lilian Ann Boyd Higgins. He received his early education at Celbridge Convent and Kilashee Preparatory School before going on to Clongowes Wood College, a private boys boarding school run by the Society of Jesus and portrayed in James Joyce's A Portrait...