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Times tabs Holland book

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

"Hope Against History: The Course of Conflict In Northern Ireland" (Henry Holt), by Irish Echo columnist Jack Holland, has been listed by the New York Times as one of the "Notable Nonfiction" works of 1999. It is, said the Times in an earlier review , "an extraordinary story that Holland tells and he does so astonishingly well."

Jack Holland has published four novels and five books of nonfiction, the most recent of which are "Walking Corpses" and (with Susan Phoenix) "Phoenix: Policing The Shadows. The Secret War Against Terrorism in Northern Ireland" which became a bestseller in Britain and Ireland.

Holland grew up in a working-class family in West Belfast, from a mixed Protestant-Catholic background. He began his career as a journalist with Hibernia magazine, where he was also resident poetry critic. He worked for BBC Northern Ireland before leaving for New York in 1977. Briefly, he reported for the New York Daily News prior to publishing his first novel, "The Prisoner’s Wife," in New York in 1981.

His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Village Voice, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and Newsday, as well as The Spectator, The Sunday Times, The Irish Times, and the Sunday Express. He was a columnist for The Irish News and the Irish Post in London. For many years he has been a correspondent, columnist and contributing editor for the Irish Echo.

He has published two volumes of poetry and several short stories, which have appeared in the U.S. magazines Story, Glimmer Train, and Crosscurrents.

In recent years, Holland has worked for Channel Four in London, and co-scripted the award-winning documentary "Daughters Of The Troubles," produced by Marcia Rock. It aired in the spring of 1997 on PBS. Currently, he is working on a new novel, "Close Target Recce" and lives in New York.

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