Biting at the Grave: The Irish Hunger Strikes and the Politics of Despair

by Padraig O'Malley

Book Overview

A book equal to the pity and terror of its subject, Padraig O'Malley simplifies nothing and scrutinizes everything. This is not only a heartfelt narrative but a sustained exercise of moral and political intelligence.--Seamus Heaney

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807002089
• ISBN13: 9780807002087
• Release Date: January 1990
• Publisher: Beacon Press (MA)
• Length: 330 Pages
• Weight: 1.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

The best of its kind

I must say I completely disagree with the above reviewers. This book is both comprehensive and detailed. It looks at the hunger strikers in teh context of their culture, their country and their cause. It doesn't have nearly as much of the "oh pity me I went on hunger strike" sentiment that many of the books on the subject, but is far from reviling the strikers. In my own opinion the last thing that Bobby Sands would want is our pity, he would want us to learn something from his efforts and to look at it with a clear eye..something which I think Paidrig does well. It is by far not objective, but objectivity is neither poissible or preferable in my opinion, we all have a lens. I read this in my Irish Studies program at The Evergreen State College and it was one of the best reads ever. It has it's flaws, like all books but I think that for such a sensationalized and under-written subject it is the best available!

The difinitive study

This is the best book I have found on the subject of the Hunger Strikes of the 1980's. He does a tremendous job of re-creating the pressure that the strikers must have felt and the pain and anguish it caused the families. If anything, I thought that with a name of Padraig O'Malley, a professor at Boston University (or College perhaps, I don't have the book in front of me,) he would be a little more sympthetic to the strikers and the Republicans as a whole.