Virtual Page Turner: Patrick Radden Keefe

An in-depth conversation with award-winning author Patrick Radden Keefe on his narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions, moderated by Peter O'Neill Chair, Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees.

About the book: 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.

Author: Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer at The New Yorker and a Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at the New America Foundation. Previously the author of The Snakehead and Chatter, Keefe’s latest bestselling book Say Nothing is a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and its devastating repercussions. Keefe's 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 National Magazine Award for Feature Writing, for his story “A Loaded Gun,” was a finalist for the National Magazine Award for Reporting in 2015 and 2016, and is also the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Say Nothing received the 2019 Orwell Prize for Political Writing, was longlisted for the National Book Award and the Andrew Carnegie Medal, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kirkus Prize. Say Nothing was selected as one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Slate, and NPR’s Fresh Air, and was also named Amazon’s Best History Book of 2019 and TIME’s #1 Nonfiction Book of the Year.

Видео Virtual Page Turner: Patrick Radden Keefe канала IHouseNYC