Bad Blood: A Walk Along the Irish Border

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Description

Follow Colm Tibn's lone religious pilgrimage along the Irish border during the tumultuous summer of 1987. In the summer after the Anglo-Irish Agreement, when tension was high in Northern Ireland, Colm Tibn walked along the border from Derry to Newry. Bad Blood is a stark and evocative account of this journey through fear and hatred, and a report on ordinary life and the legacy of history in a bleak and desolate landscape. Tibn describes the rituals - the marches, the funerals, the demonstrations - observed by both communities along the border, and listens to the stories which haunt both sides. With sympathy and insight Bad Blood captures the intimacy of life along one of the most contested strips of land in Western Europe. Now part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the very best of modern literature.

Reviews

Tibn writes prose of a heart-breaking beauty. * Daily Telegraph *
Tibn has the narrative poise of Brian Moore and the patient eye for domestic detail of John McGahern, but he is very much his own man. * Observer *
High-class reportage . . . Tibn was conscientious about talking to real people, not just names with a good line in TV chat, and went to see and hear and sense things at a local, grassroots level. * Irish Times *

Author Bio

Colm Tibn was born in Ireland in 1955. He is the author of eleven novels, including The Master, Brooklyn, and The Magician, and two collections of stories. He has been three times shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 2021, he was awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature. Tibn was appointed the Laureate for Irish Fiction 2022-2024.