Edna O’Brien, Ireland’s literary pride whose fearless novels about women’s struggles in her homeland scandalised the nation, has died aged 93. Her debut novel “The Country Girls” was banned in Ireland but O’Brien later gained international acclaim as a storyteller and iconoclast that found her welcomed everywhere from Dublin to the White House. O’Brien died Saturday after a long illness, according to a statement by her publisher Faber and the literary agency PFD. “A defiant and courageous spirit, Edna constantly strove to break new artistic ground, to write truthfully, from a place of deep fee…