内容简介

From award-winning New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe, a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions

In December 1972, Jean McConville, a thirty-eight-year-old mother of ten, was dragged from her Belfast home by masked intruders, her children clinging to her legs. They never saw her again. Her 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.

作者简介

Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer at The New Yorker, an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of The Snakehead and Chatter. His work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Slate, New York, and The New York Review of Books, among others and he is a frequent commentator on NPR, the BBC, and MSNBC. Patrick received the 2014 Nati...

(展开全部)

精彩摘录

暂时的自由并未持续多久。到了2月社会福利部门开始着手将这些孩子重新安置到孤儿院。一天，有三个女人来到公寓，声称她们已经获得房子的租用权，并且准备搬进来。这是一种战争时期残酷的权宜之计，在贝尔法斯特不断上演，就像可怕的抢椅”游戏：还没等一个被迫离开的家庭搬离住处，另一个处境相似的家庭就要占用他们的房子。孩子们拒绝离开，但政府已经做出了决定。最终，这些孩子成了“法院的监护对象”。让某人消失的行为最终被国际刑事法庭界定为反人类罪行，说其性质恶劣，是因为某种程度上它将受害者的亲人抛入了不可知的炼狱中。孩子们仍然抱有希望，也许他们没有变成孤儿，也许妈妈突然又回来了。说不定她得了健忘症，正住在另一个国家，忘了她所有的孩子还留在贝尔法斯特

——引自章节：九 孤儿

两名年轻的爱尔兰女性可能会在马克斯威尼丧命的监狱因绝食抗议而死，这个概念具有重要的宣传价值。姐妹俩早在庭审期间就已成为媒体广泛报道的主题，现在她们成了另一出戏剧性事件的主角，报纸和广播每天连续不断地更新她们每况愈下的身体状况。她们被称为“炸弹女孩”，但报道的侧重点并不在于她们连续绝食的坚韧毅力，而是聚焦于她们的年轻和性别，尤其是她们脆弱的女性特质。（休・菲尼和格里凯利也在继续绝食抗议，但他们受到的关注远不及普赖斯姐妹，而且媟体从未用“男孩”一词指代他们。）面对特殊的反抗，英国政府的领导层不抱任何幻想：倘若任何一名抗议者绝食而死，将会带来一场灾难。如果发生这种事，官员们担心会发生“大规模报复性暴力事件”。

——引自章节：十四 终极武器