"Funny, wise, entertaining and illuminating, this book is one of the
best things to come out of the Brexit saga." --Fintan O'Toole
"Read this absorbing book to understand why, since 2016, we have been
playing with fire. There is no longer any excuse for ignorance." --Misha
Glenny
Northern Ireland's frontier with the South has been an invisible line
since the peace agreement of 1998. Now the battle over the UK's decision
to leave the EU risks turning it into a hard border. Yet few people in
the rest of Britain (or Ireland) know anything much about this most
volatile part of an increasingly disunited Kingdom.
This book was written in the feverish summer of 2019, in the aftermath
of the "New'"IRA's murder of Lyra McKee, with the fear and anxiety of
Brexit looming over a region in which paramilitary forces are still
carrying out beatings, and worse, even as the numbers of tourists drawn
by the Titanic and Game of Thrones continue to grow.
The power-sharing government created by the Good Friday Agreement has
not met--a bleak record in a long-running farce--in more than 1,000
days. If it wasn't for the wonderful weather you might wonder why anyone
stayed there at all.
Glenn Patterson brings a lifetime's engagement with Northern Ireland and
a brilliant novelist's eye to an informative, darkly entertaining
portrait of a fragile country.
Welcome to Backstop Land.
