Product Description

'We all know what this could be: we know it could be dysentery, we know it could be typhoid. In the "Occupied City", we all know what this could mean -' Tokyo, January 26th, 1948. As the third year of the US Occupation of Japan begins, a man enters a downtown bank. He speaks of an outbreak of dysentery and says he is a doctor, sent by the Occupation authorities, to treat anyone who might have been exposed. Clear liquid is poured into sixteen teacups. Sixteen employees of the bank drink this liquid according to strict instructions. Within minutes twelve of them are dead, the other four unconscious. The man disappears along with some, but not all, of the bank's money. And so begins the biggest manhunt in Japanese history. In "Occupied City", David Peace dramatises and explores the rumours of complicity, conspiracy and cover-up that surround the chilling case of the Teikoku Bank Massacre: of the man who was convicted of the crime, of the legacy of biological warfare programmes, and of the victims and survivors themselves. The second part of his acclaimed "Tokyo Trilogy" - and an extraordinary picture of a city in mourning - "Occupied City" is further evidence of a singular and formidable novelist.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6534 in Books
• Published on: 2009-08-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
David Peace single-handedly forged a new crime genre: Yorkshire Noir. The lacerating Nineteen Seventy Four (1999), inaugurated his Red Riding Quartet, with Nineteen Eighty (2001) and Nineteen Eighty Three (2002) equally powerful and disturbing, showing that innovation was still possible in an exhausted genre. Amazingly, Peace demonstrated that he could create another sequence of breath and ambition -- and Occupied City, the second part of his already acclaimed Tokyo trilogy continues the momentum of the first book, Toyo Year Zero. The contrast with the earlier Yorkshire-set sequence could not be more extreme – except for a similarly dark and merciless view of humanity.

Tokyo Year Zero married a sweeping historical canvas with a tough crime narrative. In the new book, we are in Tokyo in January 1948. The city is occupied (for the third year), and a man arrives at a bank talking of a dysentery outbreak that he has been set to treat. Members of the bank staff are given a liquid which, he says, will save them from the outbreak – but within minutes they are dead. The murderer leaves the bank, having robbed it – and a manhunt the like of which Japan has never seen before is inaugurated. The mainspring of Peace’s plot here allows him to create blistering and brilliantly imagined picture of a whole society at a significant moment in its history, riven with betrayal and guilty complicity – and no crime is too massive for cover-up.

As ever, Peace does not grant us an easy read – he’s not for everyone. But those with a readiness to confront the less comfortable side of human nature – and who feel that the best books are designed to challenge us – will not hesitate to investigate Occupied City, and will be impatient for the third and concluding part of the sequence. --Barry Forshaw

About the Author
David Peace - named in 2003 as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists - was born and brought up in Yorkshire. He is the author of the Red Riding Quartet which was adapted into a three part Channel 4 series, GB84 which was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Award, and The Damned Utd, the film version of which was released in Spring 2009. Tokyo Year Zero, the first part of his Tokyo Trilogy, was released in 2007.