The Internationally Bestselling True Story Of Murder and Memory In Northern Ireland
WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING 2019A BARACK OBAMA BEST BOOK OF 2019SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION 2019TIME’s #1 Best Nonfiction Book of 2019A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER‘A must read’ Gillian Flynn
One night in December 1972, Jean McConville, a mother of ten, was abducted from her home in Belfast and never seen alive again. Her disappearance would haunt her orphaned children, the perpetrators of this terrible crime and a whole society in Northern Ireland for decades.
In this powerful, scrupulously reported book, Patrick Radden Keefe offers not just a forensic account of a brutal crime but a vivid portrait of the world in which it happened. The tragedy of an entire country is captured in the spellbinding narrative of a handful of characters, presented in lyrical and unforgettable detail.
A poem by Seamus Heaney inspires the title: ‘Whatever You Say, Say Nothing’. By defying the culture of silence, Keefe illuminates how a close-knit society fractured; how people chose sides in a conflict and turned to violence; and how, when the shooting stopped, some ex-combatants came to look back in horror at the atrocities they had committed, while others continue to advocate violence even today.
Say Nothing deftly weaves the stories of Jean McConville and her family with those of Dolours Price, the first woman to join the IRA as a front-line soldier, who bombed the Old Bailey when barely out of her teens; Gerry Adams, who helped bring an end to the fighting, but denied his own IRA past; Brendan Hughes, a fearsome IRA commander who turned on Adams after the peace process and broke the IRA’s code of silence; and other indelible figures. By capturing the intrigue, the drama and the profound human cost of the Troubles, the book presents a searing chronicle of the lengths that people are willing to go to in pursuit of a political ideal, and the ways in which societies mend – or don’t – in the aftermath of a long and bloody conflict.
“'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. Irish or British writers are tainted by provenance...Some of Radden Keefe's most powerful writing describes how the IRA's young guns saw their cause become mired in deceit, betrayal and political sell-out... Adams alone, the arch-survivor, the pompous master of "calibrated sophistry", transitioned from guerrilla leader to Sinn Fein political statesman and now denies being a member of the IRA. Humanity shines through in the small anecdotes: the doctor in Long Kesh, David Ross, who was kind to men on hunger strike, bringing in fresh spring water, talking about mountains and fishing. He had to cope as Bobby Sands and nine others starved to death. Five years later he shot himself. 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.' Melanie Reid, The Times”
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
‘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 horrible, chilling tale and I’m glad someone has at last had the guts to tell it. There have been, thus far, only two good books to emerge from the Troubles. This is the third’
Jeremy Paxman
‘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
Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer at The New Yorker, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, and the author of ‘The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld' and the ‘American Dream and Chatter: Dispatches from the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping'. He writes about legal issues, crime, national security, and foreign policy. (And pop culture occasionally, too.)In 2014, Patrick received the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing, for his story "A Loaded Gun." The recipient of a Marshall Scholarship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and fellowships at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Patrick has been a finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Prize and the Overseas Press Club's Cornelius Ryan Award for Best Book on International Affairs.Patrick grew up in Dorchester, Massachusetts and went to college at Columbia. He received Masters degrees from Cambridge University and the London School of Economics, and a JD from Yale Law School.
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