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 examine British society of the 1970s/80s through the prism of the hunt for the serial killer dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper. His novel GB84 examines the machinations of the 1984-5 UK miners' strike, while The Damned United explores the relationships between masculinity and football through the doomed reign of manager Brian Clough at British football club Leeds United in 1974. His most recent novels form the Tokyo Trilogy, in which Peace develops an interest in occupation and the occult, interrogating a post-war Japanese legacy of defeat and its resonance to our own contemporary world.Peace is also the subject to growing media interest. Films of The Damned United and Red Riding have been released to critical acclaim in Europe and the US and Ridley Scott has begun production on a big screen version of the Red Riding Quartet due for international release in 2013. This, coupled with the ongoing publication on the writer's new work, means that David Peace continues to enjoy an exciting role in directing the development of British literature of the twenty-first century.