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'Say Nothing' Is A Timely Warning That Ireland's Old Wounds Are Easily Opened

New Yorker writer Patrick Radden Keefe excels at exposing the past as he tells the story of Jean McConville, a mother of 10 who disappeared after masked men abducted her during Ireland's Troubles.

Of the great disappearances in Argentina and Chile in the 1970s and '80s — during which tens of thousands of people were taken from their homes and never seen again — Argentine-Chilean-American writer Ariel Dorfman wrote, "You cannot mourn someone who has not died."

The number of "disappeared" was much lower in Northern Ireland during the Troubles — the 30 years between 1968-98. Sixteen people were "disappeared" during that time. But

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