While serving a 50-year prison sentence after being charged with involvement in an IRA bombing, Patrick Magee dedicated himself to the study of fiction dealing with the conflict in North Ireland. Out of those years comes this fascinating work, in which Magee critically assesses various literary representations of republicans and their struggle as an ideological and political tool of British propaganda. Magee invokes the necessity of reading these texts critically, as a reading that accepts these novels at face value continues to hinder resolution of the division of Ireland.