Chris Steele Perkins' photobook The Troubles is remarkable at least in part for its chronicling of everyday life going on amid the bloody Northern Ireland conflict.
The same goes for Paul Ferris' The Boy On The Shed - a wonderful book that is so much more than simply the memoir of a failed footballer turned physiotherapist, its opening sections a frequently poignant account of growing up with war.
And, as Derry Girls has illustrated, there is humour to be found in the country's attempts to either bury or come to terms with its recent history.
Like his hilarious memoir Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?, Seamas O'Reilly's excellent debut novel Prestige Drama dwells on similar themes, and is set in a familiar location. His Derry is a place where people speak so fast it's "like their teeth are on fire", where "the sun hangs fat in the sky, shiny white and stupid, like a photograph someone's pinned to the wall in case visitors arrive" - and where the scars of decades of violence and antagonism are rarely allowed to heal for long before someone wants to pick at them.
Buzz review here.
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