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The Irish famine of the 1840s was the greatest social catastrophe of 19th-century Europe, yet inspired surprisingly little imaginative writing. There is a powerful novel by Liam O'Flaherty and a starkly moving drama by the contemporary playwright Tom Murphy. But in both Yeats and Joyce it is no more than a dim resonance. It is as though African-Americans were to maintain an embarrassed silence about the slave trade.