From one of the great Irish writers of the twentieth century, and one of the few whose work bears comparison with that of Joyce and Beckett. Aidan Higgins's greatest novel has long been unavailable, and is here reissued in a new and revised edition. Balcony of Europe, which was shortlisted for the 1972 Booker Prize, tells the story of a complacent young Jewish wife from San Francisco and a middle-aged Irish painter who meet in a village on the coast of Spain, beginning an affair during the coldest European winter in two hundred years--all the while surrounded by a cast of characters as bizarre and hilarious as they are, finally, touching. Lyrical and humorous, heartbreaking and hopeful, Balcony of Europe is Aidan Higgins's crowning achievement. .