Overview

“An extraordinary and highly original crime novel” (New York Times Book Review) that plunges us into post–World War II Occupied Japan in a Rashomon–like retelling of a mass poisoning (based on an actual event), its aftermath, and the hidden wartime atrocities that led to the crime. “Hugely daring, utterly irresistible, deeply serious and unlike anything I have ever read.”—New York Times Book Review On January 26, 1948, a man identifying himself as a public health official arrives at a bank in Tokyo. There has been an outbreak of dysentery in the neighborhood, he explains, and he has been assigned by Occupation authorities to treat everyone who might have been exposed to the disease. Soon after drinking the medicine he administers, twelve employees are dead, four are unconscious, and the “official” has fled.... Twelve voices tell the story of the murder from different perspectives. One of the victims speaks, for all the victims, from the grave. We read the increasingly mad notes of one of the case detectives, the desperate letters of an American occupier, the testimony of a traumatized survivor. We meet a journalist, a gangster-turned-businessman, an “occult detective,” a Soviet soldier, a well-known painter. Each voice enlarges and deepens the portrait of a city and a people making their way out of a war-induced hell. Occupied City immerses us in an extreme time and place with a brilliantly idiosyncratic, expressionistic, mesmerizing narrative. It is a stunningly audacious work of fiction from a singular writer.

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9780307276513

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Reviews

@lt;p@gt; An extraordinary and highly original crime novel . . . A truly remarkable work. It is hugely daring, utterly irresistible, deeply serious and unlike anything I have ever read. --Justin Cartwright, @lt;i@gt;New York Times Book Review@lt;/i@gt;@lt;br@gt;@lt;i@gt; @lt;/i@gt;@lt;br@gt; Like the novels of Stieg Larsson, Peace's books are fueled by political passion . . . Genuinely hypnotic . . . It's no wonder that several critics have compared its mood to Eliot's @lt;i@gt;The Waste Land.@lt;/i@gt; --@lt;i@gt;Harper's@lt;/i@gt;@lt;br@gt; @lt;br@gt; Hypnotic postmodern noir of almost unrivaled fury. . . . Expect to be enthralled and maybe amazed. . . . [@lt;i@gt;Occupied City@lt;/i@gt;] takes no prisoners. --@lt;i@gt;Los Angeles Times Book Review@lt;/i@gt;@lt;br@gt;@lt;i@gt; @lt;/i@gt;@lt;br@gt; A genre-busting mystery and meditation on the ambiguity of elusive reality . . . Peace writes with boatloads of style. . . . This backdrop [of post-war Tokyo] shows how deliberate, bold,

Author Information

David Peace is the author of The Red Riding Quartet, GB84, The Damned Utd, and Tokyo Year Zero. He was chosen as one of Granta’s 2003 Best Young British Novelists, and has received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the German Crime Fiction Award, and the French Grand Prix de Roman Noir for Best Foreign Novel. He lives in Yorkshire, England.

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