Biting at the Grave: The Irish Hunger Strikes and the Politics of Despair – Padraig O’Malley

It would seem impossible for O’Malley to match the depth and insight of his first book on Northern Ireland, Uncivil Wars ( LJ 10/1/83), but he’s done it in this book on the 1981 hunger strike in the Maze prison. He balances the stories of the hunger strike, the strikers, their families, leaders, goals, and strategies against the larger picture of the bitter politics of Northern Ireland. It is this context that is the strength of this work, and the book complements the more detailed study of the strikers’ positions outlined in David Beresford’s Ten Men Dead ( LJ 4/1/89). O’Malley’s analysis of the power of myth and tradition enslaving the politics of the whole island, dooming it to tragic repetitions of violence, exposes the very core of the conflict. Highly recommended.
– Richard B. Finnegan, Stonehill Coll., North Easton, Mass.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

During 1981, 10 IRA prisoners died in hunger strikes as they sought status as political prisoners; among them was unseated Parliament member Bobby Sands, who assumed heroic dimensions at home and abroad. O’Malley “assembles strands of elitism, nationalism and the peculiar sanction of the dead into a powerful and passionate chronicle of a people’s yearning,” said PW.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.