Máirtín Ó Cadhain was one of the most prominent Irish language writers of the twentieth century. Perhaps best known for his 1949 novel Cré na Cille, Ó Cadhain played a key role in reintroducing literary modernism into modern literature in Irish, where it had been dormant since the 1916 execution of Patrick Pearse. Politically, Ó Cadhain was an Irish republican and anti-clerical Marxist, who promoted the Athghabháil na hÉireann, . Ó Cadhain was also a member of the post-Civil War Irish Republican Army and was interned by the Irish Army in the Curragh Camp with Brendan Behan and many other IRA members during the Emergency.