Literature, Partition and the Nation-State

Reviews / Votes

'This book is strikingly original ... Joe Cleary restores to literary analysis cultural and political dimensions that it had lost. This is a groundbreaking book by a remarkably gifted and powerful writer.' Seamus Deane 'Stylish and elegant. Cleary's book offers and innovative and compelling analysis of the political, cultural and intellectual struggles that have issued form the colonial partitions of Ireland and Palestine ... A remarkably powerful and original piece of work.' Edward Said '... Cleary's arguments are so clearly articulated and carefully constructed that his book will be of wide use to scholars of the literatures of any partitioned culture ... his argument is remarkably well organised and clearly expressed ... this book impresses ... it provides a theoretical framework that will have wide use, but also presents some intriguing comparative readings from the three cultures it discusses ... it points many exciting ways forward for Irish Studies.' Irish Studies Review '... cleary balances the possibility of post-imperial partition being a shared experience in Ireland, Israel and Palestine ... The second part of Cleary's book has an admirably acute reading of how partition is not only represented in, but structurally determines, narrative in (Northern) Irish culture and discusses in particular the novels for teenagers ... [he] concludes this chapter with a brief but illuminating move into discussing the Peace Process and its effect on literary fiction ... [this] is one of the most significant books in Irish studies in recent years; significant for its critical and conceptual intelligence, but also for its willingness to shift the agenda of Irish postcolonial critique into truly challenging arenas, where the curiously under-researched phenomenon of Partition means that Neil Jordan can be read in the same matrix as Amos Oz.' Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory