It is indeed through my literary training and interest in art and popular culture that I began thinking about the power of narratives in conflict/peace. My interest in (hi)stories of conflict and promises of peace traces back to the late 1990s when, as a student of languages and comparative literatures in Sardinia (Italy), I decided to major in Irish literature and history. 2 Given my familiarity and interest in the topic, I had imagined I would easily connect with the book about the unnamed conflict city that I have come to know and feel as my home, academically and beyond. 1 The novel is both deeply steeped in the specific historicity of the Troubles, while also narrating experiences that are irreducible to this context. Gaining international literary acclaim, Burns has been praised for how the novel makes a feminist intervention in the literature of the conflict teasing out unspeakable experiences of gendered violence, surveillance and control.
We follow Middle Sister’s thoughts, feelings and dilemmas as suspicion and gossip about her affair with the dangerous man begin to circulate in her community, drawing social pressure and unwanted attention in the backdrop of protracted violence and the dark days of the Troubles. Set in the unnamed, yet recognisable, city of Belfast, during the height of Northern Ireland’s armed conflict, the book charts the vicissitudes of Middle Sister, the teenage protagonist and narrator, as she becomes the target of unwanted predatory attention from the milkman, a man in his 40s feared and revered in their working-class neighbourhood for his alleged association with paramilitary forces.
When I began reading Anna Burns’ Milkman (2018), recipient of the acclaimed Booker prize, I was unexpectedly faced with a struggle.
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