Occupied City by David Peace
On January 26, 1948, a public health official arrives at a branch of the Teikoku Bank in Tokyo. There has been an outbreak of dysentery in the neighborhood, he tells the manager, and he has been assigned by Occupation authorities to treat all locals who might have been exposed. The sixteen members of the staff gather as the official pours the first of two separate medicines into sixteen cups and instructs them in how exactly to drink it. Within five minutes, ten employees are dead and the official has fled. But the horrific crime is merely the catalyst for this blistering novel. In twelve different voices--each telling the story of the murder from a singular perspective--the narrative gathers staggering power and pathos. We hear one of the victims speak from the grave. We read the increasingly mad notes of one of the case detectives, the desperate letters of an American occupier, and the testimony of a traumatized survivor. We meet a journalist, a gangster-turned-businessman, a man who calls himself The Occult Detective, a Soviet soldier, and a well-known painter accused and convicted of the crime. Every voice enlarges and deepens the portrait of a people making their way out of a war-induced hell. Wittingly or unwittingly, each one of them plays a part in blurring the line between truth and lies: in their own lives, in the life of their city, their history, their nation, the newly emerging postwar world. A stunningly audacious work of fiction, Occupied City envelops the reader in its extreme time and place with its brilliantly idiosyncratic, expressionistic, and mesmerizing narrative.
David Peace was born and raised in Yorkshire, England, and was awarded one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists in 2003. He is the author of the Red Riding Quartet (Nineteen Seventy-seven, Nineteen Eighty, and Nineteen Eighty-three), which was converted into a three-part BBC series, GB84, which won the James Tait Black Memorial Award, and The Damned Utd, which was adapted into a film starring Michael Sheen. In 2007, he released Tokyo Year Zero, the first installment of his famed Tokyo Trilogy, and in 2009, he released Occupied City, the second installment.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780307263759 |
| ISBN 10 | 0307263754 |
| Title | Occupied City |
| Author | David Peace |
| Series | Tokyo Trilogy |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Knopf Publishing Group |
| Year published | 2010-02-02 |
| Number of pages | 288 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |