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 and distinguished poet, Agee brings a unique perspective to life in Ireland and the Balkans with their communal and sectarian histories. Agee is a writer particularly concerned with the ‘ethical imagination’ as 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.
