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Tokyo Year Zero (Tokyo Trilogy #1)
by
David Peace
August 1946. One year on from surrender and Tokyo lies broken and bleeding at the feet of its American victors. Among the survivors of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, panic is spreading. Facing the threat of a second purge the officers and detectives, with their changed identities and false names, realise that they can trust no one, least of all each other. Meanw...more
Paperback, 385 pages
Published
April 9th 2008
by Faber & Faber
(first published January 1st 2007)
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Dec 14, 2007
Emily
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
those who like noir, true crime and fractured prose
This is a fast, absorbing read that is a great way to start off the holiday season. I probably should have waited till I was done grading, because I kept coming back to read this book.
Stylistically, it is very repetitious, but in a good way. One of the other reviewers (who didn't like it) gives an example of this and there are other examples online, if you feel the need to preview it before visiting your bookstore or library. The reoccurring objects and phrases that increasingly take on a great...more
Stylistically, it is very repetitious, but in a good way. One of the other reviewers (who didn't like it) gives an example of this and there are other examples online, if you feel the need to preview it before visiting your bookstore or library. The reoccurring objects and phrases that increasingly take on a great...more
Oct 25, 2007
Kelly
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
fans of Ellroy and Kirino
Shelves:
mysteries-crime-fiction
This is a gritty, dark, and disturbing crime thriller, the first in a trilogy by David Peace. The setting is postwar Tokyo; the defeated city is rife with disease, destruction and death. The Japanese are battling the 'victors' and gangs of Chinese and Koreans bent on revenge and looking to profit. The protagonist, Detective Minami, is a broken man with a sleeping pill addiction, a mistress, and a struggling family. The bodies of two murdered young women are discovered and the Tokyo Metropolitan...more
Nem sei bem o que dizer sobre este livro. Jamais me irei esquecer dele é verdade, mas dizer que gostei de um livro em que não existe um único momento de felicidade e em que tudo é horrível, sofrido e negro parece-me estranho. Ainda me choca mais por ser baseado em factos reais: o cenário apocalíptico de Tóquio completamente em ruínas após a 2ª guerra é real assim como o serial killer que é investigado. Percebo as críticas de que o estilo repetitivo do David Peace é irritante, principalmente as o...more
5 likes · like · see review
Tokyo Year Zero is unrelentingly miserable. A revolving recurrence of the same events, punctuated by endlessly repeated fragments of the narrator’s stream of consciousness, hammering, scratching, and ticking, it is also, at least in parts, nigh on incomprehensible.
Tokyo, August 1946: as Japan suffers its defeat by American forces, the bodies of two women are found in Shiba Park. Crumbling Detective Minami is assigned to the case and, faced with the horrors he encounters during the investigation...more
Tokyo, August 1946: as Japan suffers its defeat by American forces, the bodies of two women are found in Shiba Park. Crumbling Detective Minami is assigned to the case and, faced with the horrors he encounters during the investigation...more
This novel is based on the true story of Japanese serial killer, Kodaira Yoshio. He was executed on the fifth of October, 1949, and at the time of his death he was forty-four years old, and was convicted of the rapes and murders of ten women.
The novel is a first person account by Detective Minami who has been assigned with a group of detectives in August of 1946 to investigate a murdered young woman , and soon it becomes clear that she is one in a series of murdered prostitutes who were raped an...more
The novel is a first person account by Detective Minami who has been assigned with a group of detectives in August of 1946 to investigate a murdered young woman , and soon it becomes clear that she is one in a series of murdered prostitutes who were raped an...more
Worst novel I've read in 2012. Tragic because that there is an interesting story in here, smothered by the worst experimental writing style I've seen since high school writing class. A full third of this book is repeated sentences. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. Huge swaths of the book would be totally fine, except that every other sentence (literally!) is a repeated weird mantra that adds nothing to the book. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I would have never finished this horrible book, exc...more
This is a very complicated book that was difficult to read and left you with the feeling that more had gone on under the surface than I could tell.
Any book that comes with a dictionary for converting Japenese to English is going to be complicated, but you can add to that the device of using repetition and constructing sentances in ever decreasing length so they look like a guillotine.
The book is set in 1946 and concerns the state of the japense nation following the loos of the war, the devastati...more
Any book that comes with a dictionary for converting Japenese to English is going to be complicated, but you can add to that the device of using repetition and constructing sentances in ever decreasing length so they look like a guillotine.
The book is set in 1946 and concerns the state of the japense nation following the loos of the war, the devastati...more
Oct 24, 2011
Blackkit10
rated it
1 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
no one
Shelves:
mystery-thriller
This is the worst book I have ever read. It was so bad I’m angry about it. James Ellroy gives a great review of this book and I want to personally ask him how he could find this book acceptable in any way?
I don’t know if this style of writing has an official name but throughout the entire story the author continually repeats himself exactly line after line, paragraph after paragraph. Example: I walk in the hot sun, the sun is like fire, I wipe my neck, the city is black. I walk in the hot sun,...more
I don’t know if this style of writing has an official name but throughout the entire story the author continually repeats himself exactly line after line, paragraph after paragraph. Example: I walk in the hot sun, the sun is like fire, I wipe my neck, the city is black. I walk in the hot sun,...more
It's a point of pride that I can count on one hand the number of novels I have failed to finish. Good or bad I always feel the only fair way to judge a novel is to get yourself through to the end, then give an honest appraisal. So with that in mind, I'm not sure what's more surprising: that I managed to finish this book, or that I didn't throw it away half-way through. I was vaguely aware that the first novel in David Peace's trilogy was notoriously difficult, but I wasn't aware of the specifics...more
Sep 22, 2011
Patrick McCoy
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
crime-noir,
contemporary-fiction
David Peace has been something of revelation for me recently. Some how he escaped my notice until I saw the film version of his novel The Damned United. Then I read about the BBC produced screen versions of his Little Red Riding Hood series abut a serial murderer in Yorkshire. Then there were rave reviews of his latest novel, Occupied City in Harper's and the NY Times. I then knew I would have to start with Tokyo Year Zero since it is the first volume of a proposed three book series set in Japan...more
The sad irony of completing this book just before and reviewing it just after the latest major earthquake in Japan is not lost on me.
The book is set amongst disaster - a hint of an earlier devastating Earthquake that hit Tokyo directly in 1923 is overshadowed by the triple moral horror of Japanese atrocities in China in the 1930s, the downright evil Allied firebombing of the civilian population and the humiliation of occupation.
This is a crime novel written by a Briton who has lived long in Jap...more
The book is set amongst disaster - a hint of an earlier devastating Earthquake that hit Tokyo directly in 1923 is overshadowed by the triple moral horror of Japanese atrocities in China in the 1930s, the downright evil Allied firebombing of the civilian population and the humiliation of occupation.
This is a crime novel written by a Briton who has lived long in Jap...more
Mar 30, 2010
John
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
historical-fiction,
crime-and-mystery
I don't think I've ever encountered this before: a high-modernist crime novel. Postmodernist, yes (Paul Auster); sort-of-modernist-but-still-pulp-fiction, yes (Jim Thompson, especially the final pages of One Hell of a Woman). But this search for a serial killer in Occupied Japan (Tokyo 1946, the "Year Zero" of the title) is as concerned with its use of language as with its mystery. And honestly, that was the problem; the suck-you-in-and-pull-you-along nature of tradition crime fiction doesn't wo...more
A very long time ago, someone close to people I cared about got murdered. For weeks, every lurid headline made me shudder, hoping they hadn't seen it. I swore off crime fiction for years afterwards, no longer having any tolerance for the death of someone's loved one being reduced to a plot device. And for exactly that reason, there's a lot of crime fiction I still really can't bear.
What I admire most about David Peace his ability to make real grief and hurt and loss. Yes, there are murders, but...more
What I admire most about David Peace his ability to make real grief and hurt and loss. Yes, there are murders, but...more
The last time I saw David Peace, with his staccato tics and repetitions, he was dealing with hard men in Yorkshire. The Red Riding tetralogy was over and instead I was watching Brian Clough do battle with a truculent Leeds United side, but it was still Yorkshire and it was still decidedly grim up North. ‘Tokyo Year Zero’ sees Peace’s focus switch to Japan after the Second World War, yet despite this change of setting and culture, it still seems very familiar.
Peace’s style is of course Peace’s s...more
Peace’s style is of course Peace’s s...more
this book is depressing, it´s disturbing, it shines a certain light on Japan, that one tends to ignore, if one is a Japan-Fan, as I am. Why should one read this book? Because it´s a literary and psychological diamond.
From the beginning the reader is stuck in the head of the protagonist and that is not a nice place to be. The policeman has a haunting past and swerves constantly on the verge to madness. He is nervous, ill, and he is unbearably afraid. The story is about a serial killer in post-wa...more
From the beginning the reader is stuck in the head of the protagonist and that is not a nice place to be. The policeman has a haunting past and swerves constantly on the verge to madness. He is nervous, ill, and he is unbearably afraid. The story is about a serial killer in post-wa...more
There might be a world of difference between Yorkshire in the late 70s/early80s and Tokyo in the year following surrender, but Peace still uses his rhythmic stream of consciousness to dig in the rubble and exhume the corruption and lies piled on our societal sacrifices. Like the Red Riding Quartet, you follow a morally compromised but thoughtful investigator (a Chandler sullied knight errant) into the maelstrom of identity-swapping, food-begging, lice-infested and utterly depraved world run by t...more
Tokyo, Giappone nel primo dopoguerra: un ritratto della città distrutta dalle bombe, dalla malattia e dalla sconfitta.
In questo clima di disperazione e povertà si svolge l'indagine volta a trovare lo stupratore omicida di un paio di ragazze.
La narrazione è merito dell'ispettore Minami, che, in prima persona, descrive contesto e evoluzioni dell'indagine; a questi però intercala, con un ritmo ossessivo e martellante, come fossero mantra, le sue percezioni e i suoi pensieri.
Questo stile narrativo,...more
In questo clima di disperazione e povertà si svolge l'indagine volta a trovare lo stupratore omicida di un paio di ragazze.
La narrazione è merito dell'ispettore Minami, che, in prima persona, descrive contesto e evoluzioni dell'indagine; a questi però intercala, con un ritmo ossessivo e martellante, come fossero mantra, le sue percezioni e i suoi pensieri.
Questo stile narrativo,...more
In Tokyo 1946: Japan is utterly defeated, the city reduced to ruins, the clock was stopped and may not yet have started again. Social order barely functions. Anyone could have been anyone only a year before (no one is who they say they are). A murder investigation results in some darker corners becoming lit up: things that should have stayed secret are exposed to view.
This is a stunning book, but it can be really very tough going at times: you have to slow down and pay attention, stick with the...more
This is a stunning book, but it can be really very tough going at times: you have to slow down and pay attention, stick with the...more
Set in immediate post WW II Japan. A detective links a vicious killer of women to his crimes while he, the detective, experiences a personal dissolution. This critically-highly-touted book has an aphoristic Japanese modernist prose format laid over a crime story. The format would be annoying, but all right and perhaps generative of a more elevated perception of human affairs were the story better. The tale is apparently historical. Who cares? You write a novel, you need to write a story. The boo...more
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March 27; Page 1, naively optimistic
I dreamt that Captain Kangaroo was working as a bartender last night. He was the same as I remember him, except he didn't have that velour-looking sports coat on. He was wearing a black cowboy shirt with the sleeves artfully ripped off and his hair was all spiky. I woke up before I had a chance to order a drink from him. Maybe it's time I started that David Peace book that's come in down at the library.
March 28; Page 35, how'd I get this bruise?
Did I read a re...more
I dreamt that Captain Kangaroo was working as a bartender last night. He was the same as I remember him, except he didn't have that velour-looking sports coat on. He was wearing a black cowboy shirt with the sleeves artfully ripped off and his hair was all spiky. I woke up before I had a chance to order a drink from him. Maybe it's time I started that David Peace book that's come in down at the library.
March 28; Page 35, how'd I get this bruise?
Did I read a re...more
I'll read anything David Peace does. He's a very very good writer brilliant at describing the psychogeography and setting of a novel with his repetative prose and frequent internal monologues. You really get a feeling for the chaos of occupied Japan in this novel, a devastated Tokyo full of sickness and corruption, its internal structure and organisation in ruins. Peace lived in Tokyo for nearly 15 years and this is the first of a Tokyo trilogy. But it's only 3 stars because I think he's treadin...more
This is the second book of Peace's that I've read. There something about his repetitive, claustrophobic style that works for me, although I can't quite put my finger on why it works. I can see many of its flaws, but I don't care.
I don't know how a book that is utterly humorless can be so thoroughly entertaining. Everything about the story is over-the-top, wallowing in the desperation of the story and setting, yet it retains the earnestness of a teenage poet.
The best comparison that I can make is...more
I don't know how a book that is utterly humorless can be so thoroughly entertaining. Everything about the story is over-the-top, wallowing in the desperation of the story and setting, yet it retains the earnestness of a teenage poet.
The best comparison that I can make is...more
Tokio, agosto de 1946: Mientras Japón sufre su derrota a manos de las fuerzas estadounidenses, los cuerpos de dos mujeres son encontrados en Shiba Park. Un desmoralizado Detective Minami es asignado al caso y, adicionalmente a los horrores que encuentra durante la investigación, Minami deberá luchar contra si mismo.
En cuanto a su estilo, Tokyo Year Zero es muy repetitivo, pero en el buen sentido. Frases y objetos hacen apariciones rutinarias en la narrativa, lo cual puede ser para algunos muy te...more
En cuanto a su estilo, Tokyo Year Zero es muy repetitivo, pero en el buen sentido. Frases y objetos hacen apariciones rutinarias en la narrativa, lo cual puede ser para algunos muy te...more
A genuinely interesting story which is historically accurate and, from reading the back cover, something which would be right up my alley. I made it through a couple of hundred pages but had to give it up. A constant and repetitive internal monologue randomly thrown in to the narrative at will completely ruined the fluidity of the story telling for me, unfortunately. You can see where the author is coming from in trying to create an unsettling, jagged and somewhat dislocated narrative to marry w...more
David Peace costruisce detective stories da 4 stelline.
Non manca niente; la perfetta, quasi maniacale ricostruzione storica del Giappone sotto il dominio di MacArthur, dello spirito stesso del popolo giapponese. Un serial killer storicamente esistito, un caso appassionante, un detective ai margini, un giallo dal ritmo sempre più concitato fino l'esplosivo, drammatico finale.
Eppure le stelline sono tre. Sì. David Peace è un grande scrittore è il suo marchio di fabbrica è il suo stile di scrittu...more
Non manca niente; la perfetta, quasi maniacale ricostruzione storica del Giappone sotto il dominio di MacArthur, dello spirito stesso del popolo giapponese. Un serial killer storicamente esistito, un caso appassionante, un detective ai margini, un giallo dal ritmo sempre più concitato fino l'esplosivo, drammatico finale.
Eppure le stelline sono tre. Sì. David Peace è un grande scrittore è il suo marchio di fabbrica è il suo stile di scrittu...more
If you've read the reviews, you'll understand that this is a police procedural as guided tour of the hell of post-WWII Tokyo as told by a very screwed up, should I say Dostoyevskian cop narrator. One with Tourette's. One who likes blank verse. One who enjoys forcing the reader to endure long, repetitive, irritating word games in order to pluck out the remains of a plot. I admired some of what Peace is doing here, and I kept on reading, but the raves from certain critics seem overblown to me. I h...more
I had seen IFC's Red Riding Trilogy, and enjoyed the films enough to want to read some of David Peace's books. Tokyo Year Zero is part one of the "Tokyo Trilogy," which takes place during US-occupied Japan. It is a very dark story, and, at times is difficult to read. The narrative is a little jarring, as it jumps between a sort of conscious to sub-conscious stream of thought. I found it incredibly interesting to read a story about this time-period, from the narrator's perspective, but I also fou...more
I was quite impressed by this book for many reasons, the foremost being that I really felt like I was inside a japanese mind, despite the author. And even without the post-war destruction and misery and the actual crime itself on which the book centers, its a pretty scary place to be, if only because it is so different from the usual western background, values, thought process. Throw in the rest in this is a difficult book to take in - you can almost see the misery jump out of the pages, and you...more
For a junior in high school, Peace's unique writing style and his habit of liberally mixing in memories and thoughts with on-going conversations was confusing and sometimes hard to keep track of. However, for a junior in college, 'Tokyo Year Zero' took on a completely different appearance. It was now a dark story, with even darker shadows cast by some unknown past event that continually haunts the main character, Detective Minami. Peace shows Post-War Japan using Minami's thought patterns, Japan...more
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David Peace was born in 1967 and grew up in Ossett, near Wakefield. He left Manchester Polytechnic in 1991, and went to Istanbul to teach English. In 1994 he took up a teaching post in Tokyo and now lives there with his family.
His formative years were shadowed by the activities of the Yorkshire Ripper, and this had a profound influence on him which led to a strong interest in crime. His quartet of...more
More about David Peace...
His formative years were shadowed by the activities of the Yorkshire Ripper, and this had a profound influence on him which led to a strong interest in crime. His quartet of...more
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Jul 30, 2012 11:53am