Richard Lloyd Parry

In the summer of 2000, Jane Steare received the phone call every mother dreads. Her daughter Lucie Blackman - tall, blonde, and twenty-one years old - had stepped into the vastness of a Tokyo summer and disappeared forever. That winter, her dismembered remains were found buried in a desolate seaside cave. Her disappearance was mystifying. Had Lucie been abducted by a religious cult? Who was the mysterious man she had gone to meet? What did her work, as a 'hostess' in the notorious Roppongi district of Tokyo, really involve? And could Lucie's fate be linked to the disappearance of another girl some ten years earlier? Over the course of a decade, Richard Lloyd Parry has travelled to four continents to interview those caught up in the story and been given unprecedented access to Lucie's bitterly divided family to reveal the astonishing truth about Lucie and her fate.

Love, Grief and a Journey Into Japan's Shadows

People Who Eat Darkness

On 11 March 2011, a massive earthquake sent a 120-foot-high tsunami smashing into the coast of north-east Japan. By the time the sea retreated, more than 18,500 people had been crushed, burned to death, or drowned.0It was Japan's greatest single loss of life since the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. It set off a national crisis, and the meltdown of a nuclear power plant. And even after the immediate emergency had abated, the trauma of the disaster continued to express itself in bizarre and mysterious ways.0Richard Lloyd Parry, an award-winning foreign correspondent, lived through the earthquake in Tokyo, and spent six years reporting from the disaster zone. There he encountered stories of ghosts and hauntings. He met a priest who performed exorcisms on people possessed by the spirits of the dead. And he found himself drawn back again and again to a village which had suffered the greatest loss of all, a community tormented by unbearable mysteries of its own. 0What really happened to the local children as they waited in the school playground in the moments before the tsunami? Why did their teachers not evacuate them to safety? And why was the unbearable truth being so stubbornly covered up?0Ghosts of the Tsunami is a classic of literary non-fiction, a heart-breaking and intimate account of an epic tragedy, told through the personal accounts of those who lived through it. It tells the story of how a nation faced a catastrophe, and the bleak struggle to find consolation in the ruins.

Ghosts of the Tsunami - Death and Life in Japans Disaster Zone

The definitive account of what happened, why, and above all how it felt, when catastrophe hit Japan—by the Japan correspondent of The Times (London) and author of People Who Eat Darkness On March 11, 2011, a powerful earthquake sent a 120-foot-high tsunami smashing into the coast of northeast Japan. By the time the sea retreated, more than eighteen thousand people had been crushed, burned to death, or drowned. It was Japan’s greatest single loss of life since the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. It set off a national crisis and the meltdown of a nuclear power plant. And even after the immediate emergency had abated, the trauma of the disaster continued to express itself in bizarre and mysterious ways. Richard Lloyd Parry, an award-winning foreign correspondent, lived through the earthquake in Tokyo and spent six years reporting from the disaster zone. There he encountered stories of ghosts and hauntings, and met a priest who exorcised the spirits of the dead. And he found himself drawn back again and again to a village that had suffered the greatest loss of all, a community tormented by unbearable mysteries of its own. What really happened to the local children as they waited in the schoolyard in the moments before the tsunami? Why did their teachers not evacuate them to safety? And why was the unbearable truth being so stubbornly covered up? Ghosts of the Tsunami is a soon-to-be classic intimate account of an epic tragedy, told through the accounts of those who lived through it. It tells the story of how a nation faced a catastrophe, and the struggle to find consolation in the ruins.

Death and Life in Japan's Disaster Zone

Ghosts of the Tsunami

Indonesia on the Edge of Chaos

In the Time of Madness

** Richard Lloyd Parry is the winner of the 2018 Rathbones Folio Prize ** In the last years of the twentieth century, Richard Lloyd Parry found himself in the vast island nation of Indonesia, one of the most alluring, mysterious and violent countries in the world. For thirty-two years it had been paralysed by the grip of the dictator and mystic General Suharto. But now the age of Suharto was reaching its end, giving way to a new era of chaos and superstition - the 'time of madness' predicted centuries before by poets and seers. On the island of Borneo, tribesmen embarked on a savage war of head-hunting and cannibalism. Vast jungles burned uncontrollably; money lost its value; there were plane crashes and volcanic eruptions. After the tumultuous fall of Suharto came the vote of independence from Indonesia for the tiny occupied country of East Timor. And it was here, trapped in the besieged compound of the United Nations, that Lloyd Parry reached his own painful, personal crisis.

In The Time Of Madness

En el año 2000, poco después de llegar a Tokio para trabajar en un club nocturno, la británica Lucie Blackman, exazafata de vuelo de veintiún años, desapareció. El caso despertó mucho revuelo mediático y activó una búsqueda desesperada en la que incluso participaron zahoríes australianos. Se especuló con la entrada de Lucie en una secta y con su secuestro por una banda de traficantes de órganos hasta que salió a la luz su relación con un misterioso cliente. Fruto de diez años de investigación, Devoradores de sombras se lee como un thriller que desafía a nuestra credibilidad, pero es también un retrato del lado más sórdido de Japón, un drama judicial y la triste historia de una familia enfrentada y de una pobre chica que se encontró con el Mal en estado puro.

el caso de la joven inglesa que encontró el infierno en Tokio

Devoradores de sombras

An incisive and compelling account of the case of Lucie Blackman

The Fate of Lucie Blackman

People who Eat Darkness

"Tokio, jakiego nie znacie – niezrozumiałe zwyczaje, męska przemoc i białe gejsze. Odwiedzić Tokio, najbardziej intrygujące miasto świata, to marzenie wielu z nas. Dwudziestojednoletnia Lucie także pragnęła takiej przygody. Japonia, o której niewiele wiedziała, wydawała się wspaniałym miejscem do życia, a praca hostessy – łatwa i przynosząca duże pieniądze. Pewnego dnia Lucie znika, a tajemniczy głos w słuchawce twierdzi, że wstąpiła do sekty. Jednak jej przyjaciele i rodzina nie mogą w to uwierzyć. Co tak naprawdę wydarzyło się w najbezpieczniejszej metropolii świata? „Ludzie, którzy jedzą ciemność” to hipnotyzujący reportaż napisany przez wieloletniego korespondenta londyńskiego „Timesa” w Japonii. Tokio z jego książki to miasto, które pochłania, jest trudne do zrozumienia dla Europejczyków i ukrywa przed nimi swoje bardzo mroczne strony. Razem z autorem poznajemy nocne życie tokijskiej dzielnicy czerwonych lampionów – Roppongi, w której białe dziewczyny zabawiają japońskich biznesmenów, a do klubów naganiają klientów Nigeryjczycy. Są narkotyki, jest seks, jest zbrodnia. "

Ludzie, którzy jedzą ciemność. Prawdziwa historia o dziewczynie, która zaginęła w Tokio i o złu, które ją pochłonęło

El caso de la joven inglesa que encontró el infierno en Tokio

From the acclaimed author of The People Who Eat Darkness comes this “deeply felt” account of Indonesia at the crossroads of freedom and terror (Time Asia). In the last years of the twentieth century, foreign correspondent Richard Lloyd Parry found himself in the vast island nation of Indonesia, one of the most alluring, mysterious, and violent countries in the world. For thirty-two years, it had been paralyzed by the grip of the dictator and mystic General Suharto, but now the age of Suharto was coming to an end. Would freedom prevail, or was the “time of madness” predicted centuries before now at hand? On the island of Borneo, tribesmen embarked on a rampage of headhunting and cannibalism. Vast jungles burned uncontrollably; money lost its value; there were plane crashes and volcanic eruptions. Then, after Suharto’s tumultuous fall, came the vote on East Timor’s independence from Indonesia. And it was here, trapped in the besieged compound of the United Nations, that Richard reached his own breaking point. A book of hair-raising immediacy and psychological unravelling, In the Time of Madness is an accomplishment in the great tradition of Conrad, Orwell, and Ryszard Kapuscinski.

Richard Lloyd Parry

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