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

During 1981, 10 IRA prisoners died in hunger strikes as they sought status as political prisoners; among them was unseated Parliament member Bobby Sands, who assumed heroic dimensions at home and abroad. O'Malley ``assembles strands of elitism, nationalism and the peculiar sanction of the dead into a powerful and passionate chronicle of a people's yearning,'' said PW. (Oct.)