The murder, in 1972, of Jean McConville, a widowed mother of ten living in Belfast, is one of the most notorious crimes committed by the I.R.A. during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Patrick Radden Keefe wrote about the McConville killing, and about the alleged involvement of the prominent Irish politician Gerry Adams, in a recent issue of the magazine. On this week’s Out Loud podcast, Keefe and Philip Gourevitch join Amy Davidson to talk about the aftermath of the Troubles and the path to peace in Northern Ireland.

There’s a common misconception in the United States, Keefe says, that the Irish conflict was largely resolved by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. “I was really shocked,” he says, “when I spent time in Belfast for this story, to find a society that’s still really profoundly divided, and in which some of the terrible things that have happened in the past stubbornly refuse to stay in the past.” Some politicians, including Adams, talk about the dangers of scratching at old wounds, but Gourevitch, who has written extensively about reconciliation in post-genocide Rwanda, contends that unless past traumas are acknowledged, it’s almost impossible for torn societies to heal. “In terms of the historical process,” he says, “there has to be a sense that they’re now living inside the same story.”

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