Bad Blood - Libro en Inglés

Bad Blood – Colm Toibin

In the summer of 1986, when the Troubles in Northern Ireland were still a daily reality, the young writer Colm Tóibín set out to walk the length of the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Bad Blood: A Walk Along the Irish Border is his account of that journey. Traveling on foot from Derry to Newry, through small towns, farmland, lakes and remote back roads, Tóibín met farmers, shopkeepers, priests, publicans, soldiers and families on both sides of the divide. He listened to their stories, their fears and their memories, and recorded the ways in which the border, with its army checkpoints, cratered roads and watchtowers, shaped everyday life.

The book captures the tension and sadness of a divided island at a particularly difficult time, as well as the humor, hospitality and resilience of the people who lived along the frontier. Tóibín writes with a novelist’s eye for detail and a journalist’s attention to history and politics, exploring questions of identity, religion, violence and belonging without taking easy sides.

Originally published as Walking Along the Border, the book is both a travel narrative and an important historical document, offering a vivid snapshot of the border region before the peace process transformed it.

Bad Blood is an absorbing read for anyone interested in Irish history, politics and travel writing, and for admirers of Tóibín’s fiction, such as Brooklyn.