“But that was all years ago now,” we’re told in Austin Duffy’s novel Cross, set in 1990s Northern Ireland, “and at some point you have to get on with things.” This pragmatic forgetting has not, to put it gently, been a traditional feature of politics in the north, where there is still an annual public holiday – only last week on 12 July – celebrating a battle that took place in the 17th century.
Still, since the Good Friday agreement of 1998 baked the principle of “I may forgive but I’ll never forget” into constitutional politics, peace has broken out, and given the transformation in Northern Ireland since then, it’s surprising the period hasn’t had more attention in fiction.
