David Peace for Munichs
Wednesday 9th October
Topping & Company Booksellers of Bath, York Street, Bath, Somerset BA1 1NG
6.30pm
7pm
From the acclaimed and prize-winning author of The Damned Utd and Red or Dead comes another extraordinary novel about Britain, sport and the formative scars of our collective past.
David Peace is the author of eleven novels including the Red Riding Quartet, adapted for television by Channel Four in 2009, GB84, which was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, The Damned Utd, Red or Dead, which was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize in 2013, and most recently Tokyo Redux.
February 6, 1958, British European Airways Flight 609 crashed on take-off at Munich Airport. On board were the young Manchester United team, 'the Busby Babes', and the journalists who followed them. Twenty-one of the passengers died instantly, four were left fighting for their lives while six more were critically injured. Twenty-four hours later, Jimmy Murphy, the assistant manager of Manchester United, faced the press at the Rechts der Isar Hospital:
'What of the future, you ask? It will be a long, hard struggle. It took Matt Busby, Bert Whalley and myself twelve years to produce the 1958 Red Devils. It was long, hard, tiring work, but we succeeded. At the moment, I am so confused, so tired and so sad, I cannot think clearly, but what I do know is that the Red Devils will rise again.'
Munichs is the story of how Manchester United rose again, of the crash and its aftermath, of those who survived and those who did not, of how Britain and football changed, and how it did not; a novel of tragedy, but also of hope.
Peace writes the boldest and most original British fiction of his generation.'
RICHARD LLOYD PARRY, NEW YORK TIMES
'Hypnotic.'
GUARDIAN, on Red or Dead
'Probably the best novel ever written about sport.'
THE TIMES, on The Damned Utd