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Book Cover for: Rebel Hearts: Journeys Within the Ira's Soul, Kevin Toolis

Rebel Hearts: Journeys Within the Ira's Soul

Kevin Toolis

Rebel Hearts is a detailed and revealing portrait of the world of the IRA. For ten years Kevin Toolis investigated the lives of the men and women who fought the IRA's war against the British State. His journeys took him to back kitchens in West Belfast where men joked about making two-thousand-pound bombs, to prisons for interviews with those serving record life terms, and to graveyards where mourners weep. The result is moving and harrowing. Each chapter explores a world which history, faith and human savagery dominate lives and deaths. We see how a whole family was sucked into the conflict, killing its enemies and then being killed itself. We experience the chilling underside of the intelligence war between the British security forces and the IRA, and the bullet-in-the-head consequences for those IRA volunteers who turn and betray their former comrades. We live the transformation of an IRA volunteer whose attempt to ambush and murder goes horribly wrong, turning him into a hero and martyr for the cause. Rebel Hearts is a history, a map, and a guide to the psychological underworld of the IRA. It explains and uncovers the roots of the conflict in Northern Ireland through a series of compelling individual portraits of IRA men.

Book Details

  • Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
  • Publish Date: Apr 15th, 1997
  • Pages: 400
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.90in - 6.00in - 0.90in - 1.25lb
  • EAN: 9780312156329
  • Categories: Europe - IrelandPolitical

About the Author

Toolis, Kevin: -

Kevin Toolis, a journalist and screenwriter, was born in Edinburgh of Irish parents. Rebel Hearts is his first book.

Praise for this book

"A powerful book, passionate and compelling, beautifully composed and written." --The Christian Science Monitor

"An intimate and knowledgeable portrait of the IRA." --The New York Times

"Combining a reporter's eye for anecdotes with a sophisticated appreciation of the politics and personalities at play in Europe's longest-running conflict, Toolis has created a narrative that is both entertaining and illuminating." --The Boston Globe

"A profoundly personal and chilling close-up of the IRA and its effects on those it wounds and is wounded by. A riveting read." --Booklist

"Small societies with big troubles often spawn remarkable books, and this one on the IRA by Toolis, a British journalist of Irish descent, is one of the best." --Kirkus Reviews