Key themes
- The Troubles and what they required of ordinary people
- Disappearance, family and the specific torture of not knowing
- What happens to those who committed atrocities when the politics move on
About this book
A disappearance during the Troubles opens onto a whole history of violence and memory; superb narrative nonfiction.
Published in 2019, Say Nothing won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was widely praised as a definitive account of the IRA and the Troubles. Keefe spent years gaining access to participants and archives.
Discussion questions
- The book begins with the disappearance of Jean McConville, a widow and mother of ten. How does Keefe use her story — as the book's emotional spine or as a lens on the larger history?
- The IRA activists Keefe follows — particularly Dolours Price — made choices at 19 that determined the rest of their lives. What is he saying about political violence and the people it produces?
- The book asks whether those who committed murders in the name of political goals should face justice decades later. How does Keefe handle this question — does he have a position?
- The Belfast Project oral histories are central to the book's sourcing. What ethical questions does this archive raise — and how does Keefe engage with them?
- Say Nothing has been praised as one of the best books written about the Troubles. What does the narrative non-fiction form give Keefe that a documentary, history or novel could not?
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