Chronicling a culture of punishment in the racist Deep South

FICTION: The Nickel Boys, By Colson Whitehead, Fleet, €16.10

In 1993, more than 150 bodies were unearthed from a mass grave in the grounds of High Park Convent in the north Dublin suburb of Drumcondra. They were the remains of former inmates of the Magdalene Laundry that stood in the convent grounds, whose real names were unrecorded. Their corpses had been unearthed because the Sisters of Mercy were selling the land to a ...