The Little Red Chairs

The Little Red Chairs is a 2015 novel by Irish novelist, poet, and playwright Edna O’Brien. Loosely based on the real-life Bosnian Serb politician, doctor, poet, and war criminal Radovan Karadžić, it follows Balkan war criminal Dr. Vlad as he hides out in an Irish village and courts women. Though Dr. Vlad is its main subject, the story is told from the perspectives of the young women he meets, commenting indirectly on men’s powers to endanger and take advantage of women with impunity. The book, published when O’Brien was eighty-five, is widely considered her magnum opus.

The novel begins as Vlad moves into Cloonoila, an Irish village of only a few thousand people. Vlad, who holds a medical degree, advertises himself as a sex therapist and healer, establishing a medical clinic in the middle of town. His arrival draws the interest of a number of women who want to talk about their sex lives and reproductive health, or otherwise to court him. One of Vlad’s first clients, Fidelma, who has suffered through two miscarriages, visits him in the hope that he will explain how she can give birth to a healthy child. She inadvertently falls in love with him, and Vlad takes notice. Later, when she meets with her book club, Vlad appears and reciprocates her feelings. They start an affair that involves concealing their relationship from the entire tight-knit town, including Jack, Fidelma’s husband.

Fidelma becomes pregnant with Dr. Vlad’s child just as he breaks off contact with her. The last time she speaks to him, he claims that it is too risky to remain in contact. Vlad departs on a bus to Dublin along with the rest of the members of the book club. En route, he is arrested; the police reveal that he is a war criminal, having served as the highest officer of a Bosnian political party that incited the tragic Siege of Sarajevo. All of Cloonoila is horrified to hear this news, and Fidelma fears for her safety. Soon, three men arrive in Cloonoila searching for Dr. Vlad. Someone tips them off about his affair with Fidelma, and they coerce her into following them into an empty house. There, they perform a crude abortion on her using a crowbar.



Traumatized from her experience, Fidelma feels can no longer live in the town; she moves to London. There, she befriends and moves in with a woman named Jameen. She makes friends with a number of immigrants from elsewhere in Europe. She takes a job working as a janitor at a bank, but is treated unkindly by a coworker for being an immigrant. The coworker frames her for trying to steal, and Fidelma is fired without consideration of her side of the story. Fidelma also befriends Mistletoe, a young, emotionally unstable girl who suffers a psychotic break when her family forbids her from seeing Fidelma. A woman who survived the Bosnian War in which Dr. Vlad is implicated approaches Fidelma, telling her her story. Fidelma decides to attend Vlad’s trial at The Hague to communicate the horrible impact he has had on the lives of many women.

Fidelma observes Vlad’s trial at The Hague; thereafter, he is sent to jail, and she visits him. She tries to make him feel remorse for the series of terrible events that have befallen her since he entered her life. She describes the makeshift abortion and is aghast when he does not take responsibility for it. She visits him a final time and tells him that he is a monster.

At the end of the novel, Fidelma returns to Cloonoila for a temporary stay, after Jack contacts her, requesting that she baptize herself in a nearby river. She follows his wishes, then makes her way to her old house to see Jack. She apologizes for cheating on him with Vlad, and he forgives her, then dies. Still feeling that she cannot stay in Cloonoila, Fidelma decides to return to London to advocate for immigrants who need jobs and shelter. O’Brien’s female protagonist, by breaking out of the terrible conditions her male oppressor carelessly creates for her, creates her own feminist narrative instead.