The Long Slide — W.A. Harbinson

Lagan River, Black Mountain is an immense work of fiction, a 2-volume novel dramatising the whole history of 'the Troubles' in Northern Ireland through individuals drawn from both sides of the divide. Beginning in 1941, when the Germans were bombing Belfast and the IRA were bombing Britain, Book 1: THE LONG SLIDE, covers a period of nearly thirty years, taking the story up to 1969, when war broke out in the province and the British Army moved in. This first volume, THE LONG SLIDE, is a vivid evocation of a bygone city of linen mills, tobacco factories, shipyards and liquor saloons, a meticulously detailed recreation of the destruction of a way of life, and an often witty, sometimes deeply moving, occasionally shocking account of how ordinary, decent people can be brutalised by prejudice and mutual suspicion. THE LONG SLIDE is a true epic of war and peace... and possibly the first great 'Belfast' novel.