A bNew York Timesb Notable BookbrWinner of the bGuardianb Fiction PrizebrWinner of the bIrish Timesb Fiction Award and International Award pA swift and masterful transformation of family griefs and political violence into something at once rhapsodic and heartbreaking. If Issac Babel had been born in Derry, he might have written this sudden, brilliant book.br--Seamus Heaney pHugely acclaimed in Great Britain, where it was awarded the Guardian Fiction Prize and short-listed for the Booker, Seamus Deane's first novel is a mesmerizing story of childhood set against the violence of Northern Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s. pThe boy narrator grows up haunted by a truth he both wants and does not want to discover. The matter a deadly betrayal, unspoken and unspeakable, born of political enmity. As the boy listens through the silence that surrounds him, the truth spreads like a stain until it engulfs him and his family. And as he listens, and watches, the world of legend--the stone fort of Gria