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Patrick Radden Keefe

Say Nothing

A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

CA$160

Introduced By Paul Muldoon

One night in 1972, a widowed mother of ten disappeared from her home in Belfast and was never seen again. From this single haunting crime, Patrick Radden Keefe unfolds a gripping portrait of the Troubles and the lives shaped by decades of violence, secrecy and silence. Featuring an exclusive introduction by Northern Irish poet Paul Muldoon and an expanded selection of powerful photography chosen by Radden Keefe himself, this Folio book transforms one of the defining works of modern narrative non-fiction into an immersive reading experience.

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Say Nothing

CA$160
Book Details
 
Dimensions9½ inches × 6¼ inches (24.1 × 15.9 cm)
FontTypeset in Sirba with Helvetica Neue as Display
Pages544
AuthorPatrick Radden Keefe
Illustration1 black and white map; over 35 black and white integrated photographs selected by the author, 15 of which are double-page spreads
Publication Date15/09/2026
PrintingFirst Printing
Editor's Notes
 
One night in December 1972, Jean McConville, a widowed mother of ten, was abducted from her home in Belfast and never seen again. The abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the Troubles and, through the prism of this single dark event, Radden Keefe opens up the entire world of the Troubles and its aftermath.

Central to this world of violence and deceit is Dolours Price who, barely out of her teens, was already planting bombs in London and became the first woman to join the frontline IRA. Alongside her are the slippery and charismatic Gerry Adams, Brendan Hughes, the ferocious IRA commander known as The Dark, and others including Bobby Sands, Dolours' sister Marian and their diehard parents, Chrissie and Albert. Their incredible story reads like the very best thriller.

Radden Keefe has been called the 'master of narrative non-fiction' and, with this book, it is easy to see why. It is probably one of the most illuminating books about the Troubles you will ever read, as well as a compelling and profoundly human one.

In addition to the original photographs, we have a new selection chosen by the author, featuring some of the finest photographers of the Troubles, including Chris Steele-Perkins, whose images of daily life in Belfast are moving and astonishing. And a brand new, exclusive introduction by Northern Irish poet Paul Muldoon adds a whole other dimension, as he gives us his personal view of Northern Ireland then and now.
Synopsis
 
In this powerful, scrupulously reported book, Patrick Radden Keefe offers not just a forensic account of a brutal crime, but a vivid portrait of the world in which it happened. The tragedy of an entire country is captured in the spellbinding narrative of a handful of characters.

A poem by Seamus Heaney inspires the title 'Whatever You Say, Say Nothing'. By defying the culture of silence, Radden Keefe illuminates how a close-knit society fractured; how people chose sides in a conflict and turned to violence; and how, when the shooting stopped, some ex-combatants came back to look in horror at the atrocities they had committed, while others continue to advocate violence even today. The book presents a chronicle of the lengths people will go to in pursuit of a political ideal, and the ways in which societies mend – or don't – in the aftermath of a long and bloody conflict.
Editor's Notes

One night in December 1972, Jean McConville, a widowed mother of ten, was abducted from her home in Belfast and never seen again. The abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the Troubles and, through the prism of this single dark event, Radden Keefe opens up the entire world of the Troubles and its aftermath.

Central to this world of violence and deceit is Dolours Price who, barely out of her teens, was already planting bombs in London and became the first woman to join the frontline IRA. Alongside her are the slippery and charismatic Gerry Adams, Brendan Hughes, the ferocious IRA commander known as The Dark, and others including Bobby Sands, Dolours' sister Marian and their diehard parents, Chrissie and Albert. Their incredible story reads like the very best thriller.

Radden Keefe has been called the 'master of narrative non-fiction' and, with this book, it is easy to see why. It is probably one of the most illuminating books about the Troubles you will ever read, as well as a compelling and profoundly human one.

In addition to the original photographs, we have a new selection chosen by the author, featuring some of the finest photographers of the Troubles, including Chris Steele-Perkins, whose images of daily life in Belfast are moving and astonishing. And a brand new, exclusive introduction by Northern Irish poet Paul Muldoon adds a whole other dimension, as he gives us his personal view of Northern Ireland then and now.

1 of 5

Editor's Notes

One night in December 1972, Jean McConville, a widowed mother of ten, was abducted from her home in Belfast and never seen again. The abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the Troubles and, through the prism of this single dark event, Radden Keefe opens up the entire world of the Troubles and its aftermath.

Central to this world of violence and deceit is Dolours Price who, barely out of her teens, was already planting bombs in London and became the first woman to join the frontline IRA. Alongside her are the slippery and charismatic Gerry Adams, Brendan Hughes, the ferocious IRA commander known as The Dark, and others including Bobby Sands, Dolours' sister Marian and their diehard parents, Chrissie and Albert. Their incredible story reads like the very best thriller.

Radden Keefe has been called the 'master of narrative non-fiction' and, with this book, it is easy to see why. It is probably one of the most illuminating books about the Troubles you will ever read, as well as a compelling and profoundly human one.

In addition to the original photographs, we have a new selection chosen by the author, featuring some of the finest photographers of the Troubles, including Chris Steele-Perkins, whose images of daily life in Belfast are moving and astonishing. And a brand new, exclusive introduction by Northern Irish poet Paul Muldoon adds a whole other dimension, as he gives us his personal view of Northern Ireland then and now.

2 of 5

Editor's Notes

One night in December 1972, Jean McConville, a widowed mother of ten, was abducted from her home in Belfast and never seen again. The abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the Troubles and, through the prism of this single dark event, Radden Keefe opens up the entire world of the Troubles and its aftermath.

Central to this world of violence and deceit is Dolours Price who, barely out of her teens, was already planting bombs in London and became the first woman to join the frontline IRA. Alongside her are the slippery and charismatic Gerry Adams, Brendan Hughes, the ferocious IRA commander known as The Dark, and others including Bobby Sands, Dolours' sister Marian and their diehard parents, Chrissie and Albert. Their incredible story reads like the very best thriller.

Radden Keefe has been called the 'master of narrative non-fiction' and, with this book, it is easy to see why. It is probably one of the most illuminating books about the Troubles you will ever read, as well as a compelling and profoundly human one.

In addition to the original photographs, we have a new selection chosen by the author, featuring some of the finest photographers of the Troubles, including Chris Steele-Perkins, whose images of daily life in Belfast are moving and astonishing. And a brand new, exclusive introduction by Northern Irish poet Paul Muldoon adds a whole other dimension, as he gives us his personal view of Northern Ireland then and now.

3 of 5

Editor's Notes

One night in December 1972, Jean McConville, a widowed mother of ten, was abducted from her home in Belfast and never seen again. The abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the Troubles and, through the prism of this single dark event, Radden Keefe opens up the entire world of the Troubles and its aftermath.

Central to this world of violence and deceit is Dolours Price who, barely out of her teens, was already planting bombs in London and became the first woman to join the frontline IRA. Alongside her are the slippery and charismatic Gerry Adams, Brendan Hughes, the ferocious IRA commander known as The Dark, and others including Bobby Sands, Dolours' sister Marian and their diehard parents, Chrissie and Albert. Their incredible story reads like the very best thriller.

Radden Keefe has been called the 'master of narrative non-fiction' and, with this book, it is easy to see why. It is probably one of the most illuminating books about the Troubles you will ever read, as well as a compelling and profoundly human one.

In addition to the original photographs, we have a new selection chosen by the author, featuring some of the finest photographers of the Troubles, including Chris Steele-Perkins, whose images of daily life in Belfast are moving and astonishing. And a brand new, exclusive introduction by Northern Irish poet Paul Muldoon adds a whole other dimension, as he gives us his personal view of Northern Ireland then and now.

4 of 5

Editor's Notes

One night in December 1972, Jean McConville, a widowed mother of ten, was abducted from her home in Belfast and never seen again. The abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the Troubles and, through the prism of this single dark event, Radden Keefe opens up the entire world of the Troubles and its aftermath.

Central to this world of violence and deceit is Dolours Price who, barely out of her teens, was already planting bombs in London and became the first woman to join the frontline IRA. Alongside her are the slippery and charismatic Gerry Adams, Brendan Hughes, the ferocious IRA commander known as The Dark, and others including Bobby Sands, Dolours' sister Marian and their diehard parents, Chrissie and Albert. Their incredible story reads like the very best thriller.

Radden Keefe has been called the 'master of narrative non-fiction' and, with this book, it is easy to see why. It is probably one of the most illuminating books about the Troubles you will ever read, as well as a compelling and profoundly human one.

In addition to the original photographs, we have a new selection chosen by the author, featuring some of the finest photographers of the Troubles, including Chris Steele-Perkins, whose images of daily life in Belfast are moving and astonishing. And a brand new, exclusive introduction by Northern Irish poet Paul Muldoon adds a whole other dimension, as he gives us his personal view of Northern Ireland then and now.

5 of 5

Author image

Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer at the New Yorker and the author of Chatter, Rogues, The Snakehead, The Empire of Pain, which won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and was named one of the Best Non-Fiction Books of All Time by the Telegraph, and, more recently, London Falling. Say Nothing won the Orwell Prize for Political Writing and was named one of the 20 Best Books of the 21st Century by the The New York Times. Radden Keefe is also a recipient of the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Non-Fiction. He lives in New York.

Author image

Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet and professor of poetry, as well as an editor, critic, playwright, lyricist and translator. Born in 1951 in Portadown, Co. Armagh, Northern Ireland, Muldoon was brought up near a village called The Moy on the border of counties Armagh and Tyrone.

As an English student at Queen's University Belfast, Muldoon studied with poet and future Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney and became associated with the Belfast Group, an influential cohort of writers from Northern Ireland. He published his first collection of poetry, New Weather, in 1973, at the age of 21. Described by the Times Literary Supplement as 'the most significant English-language poet born since the Second World War', Muldoon writes verse that is known for its multiplicity of meaning and its use of unconventional linguistic devices. The same year, he began work as a producer for the BBC in Belfast during some of the most intense years of The Troubles, a period of sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland.

He is currently professor emeritus at Princeton University, where he taught for more than three decades, becoming director of its creative writing program in 1993 and the founding chair of the Lewis Center for the Arts in 2006. He served as Oxford Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford from 1999-2004. He lives in New York.