Superb essays on Ireland and the Balkans, considering parallels between Belfast and Sarajevo.

A long-awaited collection of superb and distinctive essays moving between Ireland and the Balkans, often considering parallels between Belfast and Sarajevo in such well-known work as "A Week in Sarajevo", "Weather Report: Good Friday Week, 1998", "Troubled Belfast", "A Day with the VJ", "The Ethnic Basis of Irish Poetry" and "The View from the Lagan". An immigrant to Ireland and distinguished poet, Agee brings an outsider's unique perspective to life in Ireland and the Balkans with their communal and sectarian histories. In these essays as elsewhere, Agee is a writer particularly concerned with the "ethical imagination"--as also exemplified by his "poetic work of nonfiction," Trump Rant, a nuanced exploration of authoritarian drift and thwarted democratic aspiration in a number of world-historical contexts, from Belfast to the Balkans to the formerly Confederate South. He divides his time between Ireland, Scotland and Croatia.