Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan

Richard LLoyd Parry uncovers the immediate aftermath and long-term effects of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami of 2011, which resulted in the loss of 18,500 souls. 'A remarkable and deeply moving book' Henry Marsh, bestselling author of Do No Harm 'A breathtaking, extraordinary work of non-fiction' Times Literary Supplement On 11 March 2011, a massive earthquake sent a 120-foot-high tsunami smashing into the coast of north-east Japan. It was Japan's greatest single loss of life since the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. Richard Lloyd Parry, an award-winning foreign correspondent, lived through the earthquake in Tokyo, and spent six years reporting from the epicentre. Learning about the lives of those affected through their own personal accounts, he paints a rich picture of the impact the tsunami had on day to day Japanese life. Heart-breaking and hopeful, this intimate account of a tragedy unveils the unique nuances of Japanese culture, the tsunami's impact on Japan's stunning and majestic landscape and the psychology of its people. Ghosts of the Tsunami is an award-winning classic of literary non-fiction. It tells the moving, evocative story of how a nation faced an unimaginable catastrophe and rebuilt to look towards the future. **WINNER OF THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE**

About the Author :
Richard Lloyd Parry is Asia Editor of The Times. He was born in 1969 and was educated at Oxford. He has been visiting Asia for eighteen years and since 1995 has lived in Tokyo as a foreign correspondent, first for the Independent and now for The Times. He has reported from twenty-one countries and several wars, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Indonesia, East Timor, North Korea, Papua New Guinea, Vietnam, Kosovo and Macedonia. His work has also appeared in the London Review of Books and the New York Times Magazine. He is the author of In The Time of Madness, an eyewitness account of the violence that interrupted in Indonesia in the 1990s, and People Who Eat Darkness- The Fate of Lucie Blackman.

Review :
Every time I think of it, I’m filled with wonderment... This book is a future classic of disaster journalism, up there with John Hersey’s Hiroshima. Mr Lloyd Parry offers a voice to the grieving who, too often, found it hard to be heard. It is a thoughtful lesson to all societies whose first reaction in the face of adversity is to shut down inquiry and cover up the facts. You will not read a finer work of narrative non-fiction this year. A stunning book from the man who has a strong claim to be the most compelling non-fiction writer in the world. A book of absolute, harrowing truth and beauty. I'd give up four of my novels to have written this book. A breathtaking, extraordinary work… Parry writes with great fluency and timing, like a novelist alternating cadences and withholding information from the reader so as to create moments of tension and surprise. And there is something of the folklorist in the way he discusses the tradition of ghost stories in places such as Tohoku and Sendai. Compassionate and piercing... giving it the character of a finely conceived crime fiction or a psychological drama… Tragic, engrossing. Parry, a journalist and long-time Tokyo resident, is able to draw something meaningful, even lovely, from the well of misery… Overall, the strength of the book lies in its stories, its observations and its language… The language is daring throughout. Ghosts of the Tsunami is alert to the social and political ramifications and transfixed by the spectral quality of the post-disaster landscape… These twin streams – one universal, the other intensely particular – come together in the mystery that is at this book’s core… Some of his most fascinating chapters take in the disaster’s psychological aftermath… It is full of stories of human endeavor, of individual and collective triumph over well-nigh insuperable odds… As well as being full of ghosts, Lloyd Parry’s A-grade reportage is also full of metaphors. The definitive book on the quake which killed more than 15,000 people and led to the Fukushima nuclear disaster. A remarkable and deeply moving book – describing in plain and perfect prose the almost unimaginable devastation and tragedy of the Japanese tsunami.