Ourselves Alone, first produced in 1987, is Devlin's best known play. Set in Northern Ireland, it explores the lives of three Catholic women who are involved with IRA men. The women are presented as being capable of much richer lives than the men, many of whom are unfaithful, abusive, and emotionally immature.

Seamus Heaney, a Catholic born in largely Protestant Northern Ireland, is Ireland's foremost contemporary poet. His Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966-1996 (1998) contains many poems that allude to the violence in Northern Ireland, especially the selections from North, his 1975 collection.

In Belfast Diary: War as a Way of Life (1995), Chicago journalist John Conroy gives a vivid account of what it was like living in Belfast during the violence of the 1980s. Conroy lived there during this period, among the people most affected by the conflict. He gives clear explanations of...