A fierce, exquisitely dark novel 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.

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.

David Peace (born 1967) is an English author. Known for his novels GB84 and The Damned Utd, David Peace was named one of the Best of Young British Novelists by Granta in their 2003 list.[1]

David Peace grew up in Ossett, West Yorkshire. He was educated at Batley Grammar School and Manchester Polytechnic, which he left in 1991 to go to Istanbul to teach English. He moved to Tokyo in 1994 and returned to the UK in 2009.

The Red-Riding Quartet comprises the novels Nineteen Seventy-Four (1999), Nineteen Seventy-Seven (2000), Nineteen Eighty (2001) and Nineteen Eighty-Three (2002). The books deal with police corruption, and are set against a backdrop of the Yorkshire Ripper murders. They feature several recurring characters. Red Riding, a three-part TV adaptation of the series, aired on Channel 4 in the UK in 2009.[2]

Peace followed the quartet with GB84 (2004). This is a fictional portrayal of the year of the UK miners' strike (1984–1985). It describes the insidious workings of the British government and MI5, the coalfield battles, the struggle for influence in government and the dwindling powers of the National Union of Mineworkers. The book was awarded the prestigious James Tait Black Memorial Prize for literature in 2005.

He followed GB84 with another fact-based fictional piece, The Damned Utd (2006), which is based on Brian Clough's fateful 44-day spell in 1974 as manager of Leeds United Football Club. Entering the mind of the man who many regard as a football genius, Peace tells the story of a man characterised by a fear of failure and a hunger for success. Peace has described it as an "occult history of Leeds United". Peace is a supporter of Huddersfield Town, a club who are a local rival of Leeds United,[3] and the team that Leeds United played in Clough's first and last games in charge of the club. The Damned Utd has been made into a film entitled The Damned United, with Michael Sheen playing Brian Clough.[4]

Tokyo Year Zero (2007) follows the investigations of a Tokyo detective in the aftermath of Japan's defeat in World War II. It is based on the true story of serial killer Yoshio Kodaira.[5] It is the first of Peace's novels to be set outside of Yorkshire and forms the first part of a trio of books on the US military occupation of Japan. The second book, published in August 2009, is called Occupied City, a Rashomon-like telling of the Hirasawa Sadamichi case in Tokyo in 1948. The final book is tentatively titled Tokyo Regained.[6]

Peace's future plans include UKDK, about the changing face of UK politics, set around the fall of Harold Wilson and rise of Margaret Thatcher, and titles possibly including The Yorkshire Rippers and Nineteen Forty Seven.[7] He has also begun preparing a novel about Geoffrey Boycott and his relationship with Yorkshire County Cricket Club and England. He intends to stop writing novels after his twelfth novel but has joked he may publish a collection of his "very bad poetry".[8]