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.
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.
The definitive book on the quake which killed more than 15,000
people and led to the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
*Mail Online*
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.
*Observer*
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.
*Economist*
A stunning book from the man who has a strong claim to be the most
compelling non-fiction writer in the world.
*Johann Hari*
A book of absolute, harrowing truth and beauty. I'd give up four of
my novels to have written this book.
*Guardian*
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.
*Times Literary Supplement*
Compassionate and piercing... giving it the character of a finely
conceived crime fiction or a psychological drama… Tragic,
engrossing.
*Guardian*
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.
*Financial Times*
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 Times*
A remarkable and deeply moving book – describing in plain and
perfect prose the almost unimaginable devastation and tragedy of
the Japanese tsunami.
*Henry Marsh*
Ghosts of the Tsunami is enthralling and deeply moving, fully
conveying and involving the reader in the sheer horror and tragedy
of all that happened yet with such beauty, honesty and sincerity.
Richard Lloyd Parry has returned the trust and done justice to the
victims and their families a hundredfold.
*David Peace*
When Lloyd Parry wrote Ghosts of the Tsunami, he was seeking “the
gift of imagination… the paradoxical capacity to feel tragedy on
the surface of the skin, in all its cruelty and dread, but also to
understand it… with calm and penetration”. It is to his great
credit that, once he attained this gift, he so generously shared it
with us here.
*New Statesman*
Ghosts of the Tsunami is a deeply moving and powerfully intimate
work about the enduring strength of community and family in the
face of unimaginable destruction and loss. This is a haunting,
beautiful, and unforgettable book.
*Héctor Tobar, author of DEEP DOWN DARK*
A well-researched, polyphonic narrative of what happened on the day
133-ft waves swept in — and how the story continued long after the
news cameras left… Lloyd Parry offers a rare glimpse into the
history and culture of a region where entire villages were wiped
out… By gaining the trust of those on the ground, the author has
created an unrivalled account of how Tohoku grieved, and is still
grieving.
*Prospect*
The character sketches are colourful; the chapters end on
cliffhangers. Lloyd Parry’s prose is fast-flowing, occasionally
stopped short by a blunt sentence… His treatment evokes John
Hersey’s Hiroshima, published a year after the dropping of the
bomb… He has done a fine job of fashioning a focused story, and
some powerful arguments, from the tsunami’s wreckage. But his book
gives vivid expression to what should be obvious: there is nothing
neat or aesthetic about a natural disaster like this.
*Daily Telegraph*
Extraordinary… Lloyd Parry writes movingly about the emotional
chasm that now separates the parents who saved their children and
those who assumed the authorities knew best… God isn’t very popular
in the West these days, so it’s striking to read a book written in
civilized, elegant prose that doesn’t rip apart Buddhist priests
and Christian pastors at the first mention.
*Literary Review*
Ghosts of the Tsunami is a brilliant chronicle of one of the modern
world's worst disasters, but it's also a necessary act of witness.
The stories Parry tells are wrenching, and he refuses to mitigate
the enormity of the tsunami with false optimism or saccharine
feel-good anecdotes. Above all, it's a beautiful meditation on
grief.
*NPR*
Parry studs the story with gems of language and detail... The
result is a spellbinding book that is well worth contemplating in
an era marked by climate change and natural disaster.
*Chicago Tribune*
Parry spoke to the parents and friends of the children and staff
involved, and his relating of first-hand accounts of the tragedy is
almost unbearable to read at times… Not an easy read, but a
rewarding one all the same.
*Big Issue*
The human cost of the deadly Japanese tsunami is examined in this
powerful and absorbing work that exposes the emotional trauma the
mountain of water left in its wake… Parry, who has worked in Japan
for years, documents with great closeness and insight the impact of
such staggering loss on people living in a society not noted for
its emotionality.
*Belfast Telegraph Morning*
His central narrative swirls around the black hole formed in those
45 critical minutes between quake and tsunami. He knows that its
awful gravity may pull some readers in, and push others away.
*Herald Scotland*
Natural disaster is given a jarringly human constitution in Ghosts
Of The Tsunami… This is "literary non-fiction", full of gilded
language and sensations as Parry recounts the scene he was met with
when he travelled up the coast of Japan to where the giant waves
had hit. A transcendental reading experience.
*Irish Independent*
Ghosts of the Tsunami deals mainly with the aftermath of the
tragedy – days, weeks and months in which parents continued
doggedly looking in the mud for their children, knowing full well
that there was no chance of finding them alive. Their testimonies
are unbearably moving.
*Mail on Sunday*
This is a haunting account of Okawa’s loss and it is almost
unbearably sad. Parry rarely speaks of his own reactions but he is
the most compassionate of writers, allowing the voices of those he
encounters to be heard… Exceptional.
*Lady*
Powerful and absorbing.
*i*
A sobering and compelling narrative of calamity.
*Kirkus*
This is a piercing look at the communities ravaged by the
tsunami
*Guardian*
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