Writing & Society Research Seminar

What is the role of literature in the aftermath of political conflict? How do literary texts inform the process of political transformation and social reconciliation? Can fiction provide a form of truth that is unavailable in other modes of discourse such as politics and history?

This paper will address these questions by examining David Park’s novel The Truth Commissioner (2008). The paper represents the opening salvo in a project to map out Irish literary history in the wake of the Troubles.

In The Truth Commissioner David Park’ depicts a fictional Truth and Reconciliation Commission, based on the South African model, set up to provide transitional justice in the aftermath of the Northern Ireland conflict. The book deploys the formal tropes of the thriller to question the grandiose claims of such commissions and the popular perception that they enable post-traumatic recovery, social reconciliation and historical closure for nations emerging from civil conflict.