We are delighted to welcome David Peace, the award-winning author of the Red Riding Quartet, GB84 and The Damned Utd, for a dissection of his ‘astonishing’ (Guardian) new novel, Tokyo Redux – a thrilling fictionalisation of one of Japan’s most enduring and haunting mysteries.

At the forefront of contemporary international fiction, David is known for his unflinching and highly innovative storytelling. Tokyo Redux is the final instalment in the popular Tokyo Trilogy, which explores the true crimes that shaped Japan in the aftermath of the Second World War.

David will be joined in conversation by Tom Benn to discuss how he balances detailed research with carefully crafted thrills and multi-dimensional characters to create a gripping neo-noir story. They will also look more widely at Peace’s career and how his work has influenced and resonated beyond the page.

‘ [A] powerful, overwhelming novel, in which genre excitement steadily gives way to the uncannier frisson of being plugged into a current of secret knowledge.’ — Anthony Cummins, Guardian

‘This is hard-hitting, hypnotic, committed storytelling from a master craftsman. His words flow through a maze the reader will never want to leave. And in this case never will.’ — John King

‘A masterpiece and a classic . . . it speaks it speaks so much to the world as it is now.’ —  Anna Sherman

‘Peace does everything he can in his novels to upset conventions, eschewing linear narrative and obvious heroes and villains, in favour of formal daring, linguistic innovation and multidimensional characters.’ — Garan Holcolmbe

David Peace is the award-winning author of the Red Riding Quartet and The Damned Utd. The Red Riding Quartet (Nineteen Seventy Four, Nineteen Seventy Seven, Nineteen Eighty and Nineteen Eighty Three) grew from this obsession with the dark side of Yorkshire. These are powerful novels of crime and police corruption, using the Yorkshire Ripper as their basis and inspiration. The Quartet was adapted into a three-part serial for Channel 4, Red Riding.

In 2003 David Peace was named by Granta magazine as one of twenty ‘Best of Young British Novelists’. His novel, GB84, set amid the 1984 miners’ strike, was published in 2005 and won the James Tait Black Memorial Award. The Damned Utd (2006), recreates Brian Clough’s time at Leeds United Football Club, and was made into a film starring Martin Sheen, released in 2009. Red Or Dead, another novel about football management, this time Bill Shankly and Liverpool Football Club, appeared in 2013. 

Tokyo Year Zero, the first part of his acclaimed Tokyo Trilogy, was published in 2007, and the second part, Occupied City, in 2009. Tokyo Redux is his latest novel. 

Part of Noirwich Crime Writing Festival

Image (c) Naoya Sanuki