Austin Duffy & Phil Harrison

Writing about the turning points of the Troubles and the legacy of masculinity.

Austin Duffy’s fourth novel Cross is set in a fictional border town in 1994 during the summer of the ceasefire. Characters like republican elder Francie – a Marxist ideologue who has just ordered the murder of a policeman – and the Widow Donnelly mourning her missing son, rub shoulders with Protestant Cathy Murphy and violent psychopath Handy Byrne, in a story of loyalty, betrayal and distant hope. Austin Duffy is a writer and oncologist who lives in Howth, Ireland.

Phil Harrison’s second novel Silverback pits two men in contemporary East Belfast against each other: middle-class doctor James Fechner and local hardman Robert Rusting, charged with murdering his father. After the trial, Fechner is drawn into Rusting’s world of contorted masculinity, with astonishing consequences. Harrison is a writer and filmmaker in Belfast.