Read Ireland Book News - Issue 13
<-- [Back To Main Menu] 1. UVF by Jim Cusack and Henry McDonald (paperback; 9.99 Irish pounds/16 US dollars approximately) [Add To Basket]
This book is based on exclusive interviews with first-hand sources and new research material. It tells the full inside story for the first time of one of the most ruthless and secretive terrorist organisations in the western world. It details their failed attempt to assassinate Gerry Adams; their secret contacts with the Irish government - in Belfast and Dublin - in search of peace; their international arms links and deals. It also details their terrorist operations, including the single worst ever act of violence in three decades of the conflict: the May 1974 Dublin bombing. After 25 years of silence UVF sources have spoken for the first time during the first cease-fire to journalists. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the dilemmas of the Northern Ireland peace process.
2. RUC: A Force Under Fire by Chris Ryder (pb; 7.99 IRP/12 USD) [Add To Basket]
This book tells the story of the 13,000 men and women of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. For more than a quarter of a century, this police force has combated terrorism and civil disorder in Northern Ireland. According to Interpol, Northern Ireland is the most dangerous place in the world to be a police officer. Since 1969 almost 300 members of the RUC have given their lives and another 9000 have been maimed and injured in the course of duty. The author has updated and revised his authoritative history of the force which traces its origins from the partition of Ireland in the early 1920s to the turmoil of the present day.
3. Fighting for Ireland: Military Strategy of the Irish Republican Movement (pb; 15 IRP/24 USD) [Add To Basket]
In this book, the author challenges many assumptions about the IRA, pinpointing the organisation's success as well as its missed opportunities. He demonstrates the tension the movement experienced between ideology and strategic reality regarding the use of force, illustrating how doctrinal purity has sometimes hampered the IRA in pursuit of its goals. Contrary to the Irish Republican movement's vigorous and assertive public face Smith uncovers an organisation characterised more by a sense of chronic insecurity than by certainty and continuity. This book is essential reading for those wishing to untangle the complex issues and motives behind IRA violence.
4. Arguing at the Crossroads: Essays on a Changing Ireland with an introduction by Doireann Ni Bhriain (pb; 8 IRP/ 13 USD) [Add To Basket]
In this book, leading contemporary Irish writers and thinkers such as journalist Fintan O'Toole, poet Eavan Boland, novelists John Banville and Julia O'Faolain, and politician John Hume present their interpretations of the Ireland they live in. First released to mark France's L'Imaginaire Irlandaise celebration of culture in 1996, this book is now published in English for the first time. An interesting and eclectic selection.
5. W.B. Yeats: A life by Stephen Coote (hardcover; 22 IRP/ 35 USD) [Add To Basket]
In this masterful new biography of Yeats, acclaimed biographer Coote shows how through a lifetime of tumultuous creativity Yeats strove to give new meaning to poetry, vision and politics. The author skilfully weaves Yeats's own life into the developing consciousness of his nation and reveals him as the ardent nationalist creating in his work an Irish soul that would soar above materialism to the timeless world of myth and magic. The bitterly disillusioned observer of the Irish Civil War emerges from his famous Tower to become the Senator powerfully advocating greater freedom for Ireland, even while interesting himself in the rise of Fascism and the cause of the Irish Blueshirts. From the great conflicts of his old age arise some of the supreme poems of the 20th century. This epic biography takes the reader into the fierce forge where Yeats constantly strove to make vision, poetry and politics one, and brings the man outstandingly to life.
6. Grace Notes by Bernard Mac Laverty (hc; 16 IRP/ 25.60 USD) [Add To Basket]
With superb artistry and startling intimacy, the celebrated writer brings us into the life of Catherine McKenna - estranged daughter, vexed lover, new mother and a woman composer making her mark in a male-dominated field. On the remote island of Islay she struggles for her artistic life in the midst of a relationship gone dangerously wrong. In Glasgow she gives birth to a child - and receives a career-making BBC commission. And in her hometown in Northern Ireland she returns to bury a difficult father, forge a tentative peace with her mother and confront the ghosts of a constricting past. Through it all she strives to maintain the habit of art, in the face of depression, privation and misunderstanding. This novel presents a harmonious vision of one women's life; it is a work of great delicacy and tensile strength.
7. Murder at Piper's Gut by Eugene McEldowney (hc; 17.50 IRP/ 28 USD) [Add To Basket]
The Fourth Megarry mystery. Superintendent Cecil Megarry has moved to Howth for a quiet life. Almost too quiet, after the excitement of his work with the RUC, life in the picturesque fishing village is hardly a challenge. That is, until he agrees to do a favour for a friend. Something nasty has been found in a fishing-net below the cliffs. As the inexperienced Howth police struggle to solve the grisly murder, and to contain the growing hysteria in the village, Megarry has a few struggles of his own to contend with. Should he come out of retirement and expose himself once more to the frustration and danger of another investigation? How seriously should he take his superiors' hostility? And what should he make of the lies, obstructions and threats that are beginning to reveal another side to Howth - a side that Megarry had rather hoped he'd live to miss -
8. Phoenix Short Stories 1997 Edited by David Marcus (pb; 6.50 IRP/10 USD) [Add To Basket]
The second anthology of short stories shows that, for Irish writers, the short story continues to be an exciting form that gives them the scope to demonstrated their talents. From the grand tradition, as embodied by Brian MacMahon, to those beginning to show their mastery of the form, such as Colum McCann, to newer practitioners such as Mike McCormack and Michael Collins. Writers include: Sheila Barrett, Maxim Crowley, Leo Cullen, John Dunne, Anthony Galvin, Sheila Gorman, Claire Keegan, Eugene McCabe, Peter McNiff, Padraig Rooney, Dermot Ryan and Una Woods. This book demonstrates that Irish writing is a fresh and vibrant force in contemporary fiction.
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