SOURCE: O'Brien, George. “Storyteller and Playwright.” In Brian Friel, pp. 1-29. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1989.

In the following essay, O'Brien underscores the unifying aspects of Friel's stories and traces his transition from short fiction to drama.

Brian Friel was born near Omagh, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland on 9 January 1929. His father, a native of Derry, taught at a local primary school. Friel's mother was from Donegal, where the author-to-be frequently spent holidays that were to have a formative effect on his imagination, as his stories in particular suggest, and that no doubt influenced his view of himself as “a sort of peasant at heart.”¹ He has lived in rural County Donegal since 1969, and the generic village of Ballybeg where many of his plays are set is (to cite a typical reference) located “in a remote part of County Donegal”²—than which it is difficult to imagine a place more...