Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • SOON TO BE AN FX LIMITED SERIES STREAMING ON HULU • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • From the author of Empire of Pain—a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions.
One of The New York Times’s 20 Best Books of the 21st Century
"Masked intruders dragged Jean McConville, a 38-year-old widow and mother of 10, from her Belfast home in 1972. In this meticulously reported book—as finely paced as a novel—Keefe uses McConville's murder as a prism to tell the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Interviewing people on both sides of the conflict, he transforms the tragic damage and waste of the era into a searing, utterly gripping saga." —New York Times Book Review
"Reads like a novel ... Keefe is ... a master of narrative nonfiction. . .An incredible story."—Rolling Stone
A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, TIME, NPR, and more!
Jean McConville's abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress--with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes.
Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders.
From radical and impetuous I.R.A. terrorists such as Dolours Price, who, when she was barely out of her teens, was already planting bombs in London and targeting informers for execution, to the ferocious I.R.A. mastermind known as The Dark, to the spy games and dirty schemes of the British Army, to Gerry Adams, who negotiated the peace but betrayed his hardcore comrades by denying his I.R.A. past--Say Nothing conjures a world of passion, betrayal, vengeance, and anguish.
Product description
Review
A Best Book of the Year: The Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Time Magazine, Wall Street Journal, Economist, GQ, Slate, NPR, Variety, Slate, Buzzfeed
WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING
ONE OF DUA LIPA'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
‘Breathtaking in its scope and ambition… Keefe has produced a searing examination of the nature of truth in war and the toll taken by violence and deceit… Will take its place alongside the best of the books about the Troubles’
Sunday Times, A Book of the Year
‘Keefe’s narrative is an architectural feat, expertly constructed out of complex and contentious material, arranged and balanced just so… This sensitive and judicious book raises some troubling, and perhaps unanswerable, questions’
New York Times, A Book of the Year
‘Unforgettable… Radden Keefe examines the profound human cost of the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the lengths that people will go to in pursuit of a political ideal’
Dua Lipa, A Book of the Year
‘A gripping and profoundly human explanation for a past that still denies and defines the future… Only an outsider could have written a book this good … If conclusions are possible, Radden Keefe’s is that everyone became complicit in the terror… I can’t praise this book enough: it’s erudite, accessible, compelling, enlightening. I thought I was bored by Northern Ireland’s past until I read it’
The Times
‘An exceptional new book, Say Nothing explores this brittle landscape to devastating effect’
Wall Street Journal
‘The best book I’ve read for a while, it’s fantastic’
Product details
- Publisher : William Collins (22 August 2019)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 528 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0008159262
- ISBN-13 : 978-0008159269
- Item Weight : 458 g
- Dimensions : 12.9 x 3.35 x 19.8 cm