On Another Man's Wound

By Ernie O'Malley,

Book cover of On Another Man's Wound

Book description

More than any other book of the period, On Another Man's Wound captures the feel of Ireland―the way people lived, their attitudes and beliefs―and paints brilliant cameo sketches of the great personalities of the Rising and the War. Like many of the Irish, O'Malley was largely indifferent to the attempts…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked On Another Man's Wound as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I love this story because it is a time portal that swiftly deposited me in the streets of Dublin just before the Easter Rising. I could see the dirty streets and poverty and feel the hunger for change, for freedom from occupation, that was palpable in the air. I watched the unbelievable and fantastic display of doomed, deadly belligerence against the British.

I love the intensity and rawness of the author’s changing outlook. From a disinterested privileged medical student to a hard-core rebel, abandoning his bright future, he leads men across the wilds of Ireland in tasks he would rather…

This searing memoir by a former commandant of the IRA not only gives an inside look at the Irish War for Independence, but does so with literary panache.

And the tale of O’Malley transformation from medical student to rebel leader seems to have inspired not one but two movies – Shake Hands With the Devil, a Cagney flick in which Don Murray goes from medical student to IRA man, and The Wind That Shakes the Barley, in which Cillian Murphy follows the same arc.

The interviews O’Malley collected with IRA veterans later in life proved invaluable for my book. And I…

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