This powerful piece begins with one man's story of his brother's death by hunger strike, then evolves into a broader meditation on the soul-destroying pain of a long-running violent conflict. The strength of the piece is in the voices and the facts they carry: plainspoken Northern Irelanders telling of their lost loved ones.

One quibble: the piece would be even stronger without some of the bits of narration, which admittedly are very few and spare. The last couple of musings on the nature of conflict feel overwritten. But that's a minor gripe. At a time when Americans are killing and dying everyday, it's moving to hear these voices from another of the globe's trouble spots, one fortunately making fewer headlines these days.