Nothing But an Unfinished Song: The Life and Times of Bobby Sands [Paperback]

Denis O'Hearn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 8, 2006

At seventeen, Bobby Sands was interested in girls, soccer, and music. Ten years later he led his fellow prisoners on a protest against repressive conditions in Northern Ireland's H-Block prisons that grabbed the world's attention. After sixty-six days of refusing to eat, Sands died on May 5, 1981. Parliaments across the world stopped for a minute's silence in his honor. Bobby Sand's remarkable life and death have made him an Irish Che Guevara. Nothing But an Unfinished Song is the first biography to properly describe the motivation of the hunger strikers, recreating this period of history from within the prison walls. This powerful book illuminates for the first time this enigmatic, controversial and heroic figure.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Irish nationalist and British MP Bobby Sands died in 1981, 66 days into a hunger strike. Sands's story is different from those of other Fenian heroes because most of his exploits were not in the field but rather in prison, where he spent almost all his adult life. Originally arrested by the British in 1972 for a string of armed stickups that apparently had little to do with the IRA, Sands gradually educated himself in prison and became fluent in the Gaelic language. Released for a short time, he found himself again behind bars after the bombing of a furniture showroom went awry. IRA men were being treated as criminals, not political prisoners, and in protest, they went "on the blanket," naked. It eventually became a test of wills between Sands and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who declared she would "never talk to terrorists." O'Hearn chronicles Sands's excruciating death and its aftermath. It galvanized the Catholics of Northern Ireland and, according to O'Hearn, a professor at Queen's College in Belfast, "helped bring Republicans in from the cold," that is, into the political process that culminated in the Good Friday accords in 1998. This extensive—and depressing—biography adds valuable insight into the political evolution of Irish nationalism from the 1960s through today. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Bobby Sands spent nearly nine years in a repressive Northern Ireland prison, eventually dying in 1981 after a hunger strike that garnered respect from disparate areas--from the British parliament to South Africa's Nelson Mandela--for Sands' willingness to die for a cause. Sands was 17 when his budding interest in Irish politics drew him into the Irish Republican Army. In the infamous H-Block prisons, Sands met IRA leader Gerry Adams and studied Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh, as well as Irish socialists James Connolly and Liam Mellowes, to develop a broader understanding of colonial oppression. Sands developed into a republican propagandist, using his poetry, prose, songs, and essays to resist what the IRA saw as colonial occupation by the British. O'Hearn depicts the clash of cultures as the IRA old guard and the provisional members argued over tactics, both fighting British efforts to criminalize their resistance, as well as the forces and conditions that led to the 66-day hunger strike that cost Sands his life. This is a revealing look at the IRA politics and resistance tactics that made Sands an iconic figure. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Nation Books; illustrated edition edition (December 8, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560258888
• ISBN-13: 978-1560258889
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #506,691 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars inside a struggle, February 23, 2006

By 

anonymous (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nothing But an Unfinished Song: Bobby Sands, the Irish Hunger Striker Who Ignited a Generation (Hardcover)

Every now and then a book comes along that can transport you inside a moment in history, or an aspect of human experience, that had seemed remote, or unimaginable, and bring it close in a way that changes how you see the world. Nothing But an Unfinished Song is such a book. If you are old enough, you probably remember the hunger strike and Bobby Sands' death, perhaps as your first awareness that something was terribly wrong in Ireland. If you are like me, your memory is colored by a sense of unreality - the dual shock of men starving themselves to death as a political statement, and of this somehow being acceptable (at least to those in power) in the latter part of the twentieth century in a country as culturally, politically, and historically close to the U.S. as Ireland. And yet, while the thought of prisoners being kept in conditions that drove them to such lengths was cause for enormous outrage, there was another source of confusion and moral discomfort. After all, these were IRA men, and the IRA was waging a military campaign. The Brits were killing people, but the IRA was too. So who were these men and what did they die for? This book is an extraordinary gift to all who asked this question. O'Hearn's exhaustive research, including interviews with many of the men who were imprisoned with Bobby, makes human and comprehensible the development of political consciousness that led Bobby from an unremarkable life to one that inspired millions. For those who continue to struggle against any form of oppression, it is as inspirational as it is heartbreaking. With truly nothing, behind prison walls, Bobby never ceased to think, learn, and create - and to strive to reach beyond those walls. Any group struggling for change must make choices about how their part of the struggle will be waged - however limited the range of possible means may be. By illuminating one moment in one struggle, O'Hearn's book offers much for all of us to ponder.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This is worth the read, March 21, 2006

By 

Patrick Crowley (Lincoln, Rhode Island) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Nothing But an Unfinished Song: Bobby Sands, the Irish Hunger Striker Who Ignited a Generation (Hardcover)

The life in the Northern Ireland Prison system was a horrible existence. What these men and women went through for their people is something any student of history or of the cuase of Irish freedom should know about.

The details of the "Dirty Protest" are enough to make a person cry. What the British government did should never be forgotten. The author does a great job showing how Long Kesh and the H-Blocks became a school - a place where people learned what the definition of freedom really is... and how Irish freedom was just like the freedom of all colonial peoples in the world.

The death of Bobby Sands and the other 9 men who followed him is a story that needs to be told again and again and again.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Inspiring Life Story, February 9, 2006

By 

Michael Fitzgerald "Fitz" (Ireland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nothing But an Unfinished Song: Bobby Sands, the Irish Hunger Striker Who Ignited a Generation (Hardcover)

This is a meticulously researched and gripping biography of the hunger-striker who gave his life in the struggle for political recognition of the Republican struggle in Ireland. Bobby Sands transformed politics in Irish society and became an inspirational and internationally respected figure for his selfless political activism. He later became renowned for his transcendent poetry and rousing songs that captured key episodes in Irish history. But few knew this man intimately even as he became an icon of the Irish struggle for self-determination and a member of the British Parliament while he lay in a prison hospital.

Denis O'Hearn has put this to rights in a historically informative and yet intimate account of Sands' short life that included community and military activism and a harrowing journey through a gruelling and oppressive prison system. Through sheer bloody-mindedness, mental and physical resolve, and the capacity to recognise 'opportunities' in the most brutal forms of detention, Sands changed the trajectory of Irish politics. O'Hearn reveals a character full of ceaseless energy, buoyancy, sensitivity as well as political vision in a brisk, gripping and deeply moving account of Sands' life.
This book challenges complacency, urges activism and rejects thinking within the narrow confines of mainstream political discourse. Bobby Sands, the activist, has been revealed to a new generation and continues to inspire.