And you, what will you do for your country at war?

Ireland is a factory of writers who are not afraid to mix “literature and politics” : perhaps because they are braver, perhaps because they have been hungrier, perhaps because they have such a powerful literary tradition (with an imposed language, but that would be another debate) that they have the tools and courage for everything. And a conflict as entrenched and painful as the one that has occurred in this country yields results like the work of Audrey Magee, whose poignant The colony (Periscope, 2024) and from whom now reaches us The commitment , a previous novel, but no less interesting or current for that: the typical historical novel that makes us think, a lot, about what we would do today if a war broke out. The answers it gives are quite distressing: surely we are all more selfish and submissive than we dream.