Analysing David Peace

Analysing David Peace provides an exciting, challenging and accessible critical introduction to the work of contemporary British novelist David Peace. Through a detailed analysis of his writings, as well as the socio-cultural contexts of their production and dissemination, the collection explores Peace’s attempts to capture the sensibilities of late twentieth century society and contributes to an ongoing debate in the media about his representations. Peace is an emerging author who is widely read and taught and whose novels are increasingly celebrated. In the past decade Peace has won the James Tait Black Memorial Award and was named as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. The four novels of his Red Riding Quartet interrogate British society of the 1970s/80s through the prism of the hunt for the serial killer dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper. GB84 examines the machinations of the 1984–5 UK miners’ strike, while The Damned United explores relationships between masculinity and football through the doomed reign of manager Brian Clough at British football club Leeds United in 1974. In the Tokyo Trilogy, Peace develops an interest in occupation and the occult, interrogating Japan’s post-war legacy of defeat and its resonance to our contemporary world. This collection offers an essential guide to the work of David Peace, as well as a unique insight into his canon to date.