PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE is a staff writer at The New Yorker, an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of The Snakehead and Chatter. His 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.
National Book Critics Circle Award Winner • A New York Times Top
Ten Book of the Year • A Washington Post Top Ten Book Of The Year
Long • Listed for the National Book Award • TIME Magazine’s Best
Nonfiction Book of the Year • Best Book of the Decade by EW and
LitHub • Winner of the Orwell Prize
A Best Book of the Year: The Wall Street Journal, The Economist,
The Chicago Tribune, GQ, Slate, NPR, Variety, Slate, Minneapolis
Star Tribune, St. Louis Post Dispatch, The Dallas Morning News,
Buzzfeed, Kirkus Reviews, and BookPage
"If it seems as if I'm reviewing a novel, it is because Say Nothing
has lots of the qualities of good fiction, to the extent that I'm
worried I'll give too much away, and I'll also forget that Jean
McConville was a real person, as were—are—her children. And her
abductors and killers. Keefe is a terrific storyteller... He brings
his characters to real life. The book is cleverly structured. We
follow people--victim, perpetrator, back to victim—leave them,
forget about them, rejoin them decades later. It can be read as a
detective story. . .What Keefe captures best, though, is the
tragedy, the damage and waste, and the idea of moral injury. . .Say
Nothing is an excellent account of the Troubles.
—RODDY DOYLE, The New York Times Book Review
"An exceptional new book. . .explores this brittle landscape [of
Northern Ireland] to devastating effect . . . fierce reporting. .
.The story of McConville's disappearance, its crushing effects on
her children, the discovery of her remains in 2003, and the efforts
of authorities to hold someone accountable for her murder occupy
the bulk of Say Nothing. Along the way, Mr. Keefe navigates the
flashpoints, figures and iconography of the Troubles: anti-Catholic
discrimination, atrocities by the Royal Ulster Constabulary and
occupation by the British Army, grisly IRA bombings in Belfast and
London, the internment of Irish soldiers and the hunger strikes of
Bobby Sands and others, the Falls Road and the Shankill Road,
unionist paramilitaries, the "real" IRA and the “provisionals,"
counter-intelligence, the Armalite rile and the balaclava. It is a
dizzying panorama, yet Mr. Keefe presents it with clarity."
—MICHAEL O'DONNELL, The Wall Street Journal
"Patrick Radden Keefe’s new book Say Nothing investigates the
mystery of a missing mother and reveals a still-raw violent past. .
.The book often reads like a novel, but as anyone familiar with his
work for The New Yorker can attest, Keefe is an obsessive reporter
and researcher, a master of narrative nonfiction. . .An incredible
story."
—Rolling Stone
"As the narrator of a whodunit. . .[Keefe] excels, exposing the
past, layer by layer, like the slow peel of a rotten onion, as he
works to answer a question that the British government, the
Northern Irish police and the McConville family has been seeking
the answer to for nearly 50 years... Keefe draws the characters in
this drama finely and colorfully. . .Say Nothing is a reminder of
Northern Ireland's ongoing trauma. And with Brexit looming, it's a
timely warning that it doesn't take much to open old wounds in
Ireland, and make them fresh once more."
—PADDY HIRSH, NPR
"Meticulously reported, exquisitely written, and grippingly told,
Say Nothing is a work of revelation. Keefe not only peels back,
layer by layer, the truth behind one of the most important and
mysterious crimes of a terrible conflict; he also excavates the
history of the Troubles, and illuminates its repercussions to this
day."
—DAVID GRANN, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of
the Flower Moon
"Patrick Radden Keefe's gripping account of the Troubles is equal
parts true-crime, history, and tragedy. Keefe's incisive reporting
reveals the hidden costs of the Troubles, illuminating both the
terrible toll of the conflict, and how it continues to reverberate
today. A must read."
—GILLIAN FLYNN, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Gone
Girl
“Patrick Radden Keefe uses the old Irish phrase, ‘Whatever you say,
say nothing,’ to suggest and to say just about everything.
Keefe's great accomplishment is to capture the tragedy of the
Troubles on a human scale. By tracing the intersecting lives
of a handful of unforgettable characters, he has created a deeply
honest and intimate portrait of a society still haunted by its own
violent past. Say Nothing is a bracing,
empathetic, heartrending work of storytelling.”
—COLUM McCANN, New York Times bestselling author of Transatlantic
and Let the Great World Spin, Winner of the National Book Award
"Patrick Radden Keefe has the rare ability to convey an intimate
story that powerfully illuminates a much larger one.
Combining the skills of an investigative journalist with the
storytelling power of a suspense novelist, Keefe brilliantly
represents the menace and intrigue that devastated Belfast during
The Troubles, and shows the course of ordinary lives headed toward
inevitable and awful collision. By turns gripping and profoundly
revelatory, Say Nothing shines a brighter light on Northern
Ireland's tragic past than any history book."
—SCOTT ANDERSON, New York Times bestselling author of Lawrence in
Arabia
“A shattering, intimate study of how young men and women consumed
by radical political violence are transformed by the history they
make, and struggle to come to terms with the blood they have shed,
Say Nothing is a powerful reckoning. Keefe has written an essential
book.”
—PHILIP GOUREVITCH, author of National Book Critics Circle Award
winner We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With
Our Families and The Ballad of Abu Ghraib
“Smart, searching, and utterly absorbing, Say Nothing sweeps us
into the heart of one of the modern world’s bitterest conflicts
and, with unusual compassion, walks us back out again along the
road to reconciliation. This is more than a powerful, superbly
reported work of journalism. It is contemporary history at its
finest.”
—MAYA JASANOFF, author of the National Book Critics Circle
Award-winning Liberty’s Exiles and The Dawn Watch
“Say Nothing is a piercing inquiry into the nature of political
violence and its aftermath, by one of the best reporters in the
United States. In this beautifully written book, Patrick Radden
Keefe delves into the heart of the IRA, chronicling the worst years
of the Troubles and the ghosts that continue to haunt Belfast even
now that the fighting is over. Faulkner had it right: 'The
past is never dead. It’s not even past.'”
—PETER BERGEN, author of Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden
From 9/11 to Abbottabad
"[Keefe] incorporates a real-life whodunit into a moving,
accessible account of the violence that has afflicted Northern
Ireland... Tinged with immense sadness, this work never loses
sight of the humanity of even those who committed horrible acts in
support of what they believed in."
—Publishers Weekly, *starred review*
"A searing reflection on the Troubles and their aftermath...
Masterly."
—The Economist
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