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Lost Lives: Narrative, Commemoration, and the Northern Ireland Troubles

Lost Lives (1999) contains the stories of the men, women and children who died as a result of the Northern Ireland Troubles. Comprising almost a million words, it is an encyclopedic account of the 3,636 deaths that occurred between 1966 and 1999.1 At the time of publication, critics were quick to celebrate the scale and significance of the book’s achievement. Fintan O’Toole called it “one of the most remarkable books to have emerged from any conflict.”2 Nell McCafferty described it as “the print equivalent of Picasso’s Guernica.”3 For Kevin Myers, it was the “greatest single piece of scholarship . . . ever conducted in Ireland.”4 Public reactions to Lost Lives were equally enthusiastic. In bookshops across Northern Ireland, groups of people huddled round displays, poring over the text. One storeowner discovered a copy stained with mascara where a woman had wept onto its pages (LL 22). In 2000, when Seamus Heaney was asked to open an extension to Belfast’s Linen Hall library, he chose Lost Lives as the first volume to be placed on the shelves. At Clonard Monastery, priests placed a copy on a lectern in front of the altar for all to read. The Belfast Telegraph called it “a labour of Hercules,” the Sunday Tribune spoke of “a magnificent achievement,” while Hot Press magazine insisted, “No other book will have its enduring power.”5 At a public lecture in Australia in 2015, Professor