In this book, Patrick Radden Keefe offers a forensic account of a crime and a portrait of the world in which it happened. The tragedy of an entire country is captured in the narrative of a handful of characters. A poem by Seamus Heaney inspires the title 'Whatever You Say, Say Nothing'. By defying the culture of silence, Radden Keefe illuminates how a close-knit society fractured; how people chose sides in a conflict and turned to violence; and how, when the shooting stopped, some ex-combatants came back to look at the atrocities they had committed, while others continue to advocate violence. The book presents a chronicle of the lengths people will go to in pursuit of a political ideal, and the ways in which societies mend – or don't – in the aftermath of a long and bloody conflict.