Johnston, Jennifer Prudence (1930– )

Irish writer, notable for her intimate portraits of struggling relationships between families, friends, lovers, and communities. Some of her best-known works are The Captains and the Kings (1972); Shadows on Our Skin (1977), shortlisted for the Booker Prize; The Old Jest (1979), winner of the Whitbread Award for fiction; and Fool's Sanctuary (1987). Later novels include Two Moons (1998) and This is not a Novel (2002).

Her style is lucid but always attuned to subtleties of human emotion and political reality; one of the strengths of her fiction is her ability to create sympathetic but complex characters.

Born in Dublin and educated at Trinity College, Dublin, Johnston settled near Londonderry, Northern Ireland, in the 1970s.