May the Lord in His Mercy Be Kind to Belfast - Tapa blanda

No solution to Northern Ireland’s long drawn-out agony will be found with a proper and widespread understanding by all parties of the hopes and fears, the passions and prejudices, the suffering and grief of the people who live there. As a contribution to this understanding, Tony Parker’s book is a landmark achievement. By earning the trust of priests, politicians, prisoners, terrorists (both Loyalist and Republican), doctors, nurses, lawyers, bus-drivers, bomb-disposal experts, shop assistants, single mothers, teachers and schoolchildren, he has crossed every sectarian and social divide and, in these extraordinary encounters, exposed the core of the problem in the hearts and minds of individuals. The result makes quietly devastating reading – by turns moving, inspirational, disturbing, chilling but consistently illuminating.

‘A remarkable record of conversation by ordinary – occasionally extraordinary – Belfast people... Tony Parker’s editing of the conversation produces brilliant, funny, tragic, and often infuriating talk... a compulsively, readable book.’
JOHN COLE, 'Sunday Times'

‘This is Tony Parker at his best... a precious work. Through the uncanny integrity of these dramatic monologues the spirit of the North moves with soft, haunted steps.’
ROBERT WINDER, 'The Independent'

‘Tony Parker is an interviewer with an extraordinary capacity to filter what people say to him without turning their words his colour. His portraits, both of individuals and communities, are among the most illuminating and dignified that contemporary writing has to offer.’
MARY LOUDON, 'Sunday Times'

‘One of the most original and telling books to come out of the Northern conflict’
IRISH TIMES