Book description
Local rather than international, the dramas and privations described
in this memoir are not the stuff of headlines. This is the story of an
ordinary boy growing up in Belfast after the war; an ordinary boy who
would go on to become world-famous as a hostage in Beirut and author
of the extraordinary testimony of imprisonment and survival that was
An Evil Cradling.
Brian Keenan has captured the vanished world of 1950s Belfast in all
its vivid vernacular and grey, post-war austerity. I'll Tell Me
Ma is an affectionate story of a disaffected childhood. At the
centre is a shy, self-conscious boy of unusual moral integrity; a boy
puzzled by religion and sectarianism, in love with books and music and
full of curiosity about the world outside. It is also a book about
coming-to-terms with the past: a resounding, thrilling record of redemption.
Brian Keenan was born in Belfast in 1951.
An Evil Cradling
is the story of his four years' captivity in Beirut and is recognized as
a non-fiction classic. He is also the author of the novel,
Turlough
and two travel books,
Between Extremes
(with John McCarthy) and
Four Quarters Of Light
. He lives with his family outside Dublin.
