《Say Nothing》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.

《Say Nothing》摘录：

在短暂的荣耀之后，都柏林的暴动遭到英国政府无情镇压。皮尔斯被送至军事法庭接受审判，最终和14名战友一起被枪决。爱尔兰独立战争导致了爱尔兰的分裂，后来这座岛屿在1921年被一分为二：南部的26个郡作为爱尔兰自由邦取得了一定程度的独立，北部剩余的6个郡则继续由大不列颠统治。 正如其他忠诚的共和派一样，提到他们恰巧居住的地方时，普赖斯家并不称其为“北爱尔兰 ”（ Northern Ireland）， 而是称之为“爱尔兰北部”（ the North of Ireland。当地人的言谈中充满了各种矛盾和冲突的话题，就连专有名词也可能带有政治色彩 对殉难的崇拜有其危险性。根据《旗帜和徽章法案》，北爱尔兰的纪念仪式有着严格的规定。北爱政府对于爱尔兰人的民族主义十分担忧，就连民众展示爱尔兰共和国三色国旗的举动都可能招致牢狱之灾。