David Peace & Chris Power: Cities That Cast Long Shadows

Berlin and Tokyo: two peaceful and thriving cities… yet each haunted by the weight of history, where everything is imbued with ‘the stench of the past, the noise of the future.’ Chris Power’s clever debut novel A Lonely Man is set in Berlin under the subtle shadow of the Cold War era. There, a man sees a way out of his writer’s block by recounting another writer’s story of his pursuit by a Russian oligarch. Meanwhile David Peace’s Tokyo Redux is the final novel in his Tokyo trilogy. It is the fictionalised account of a real murder that took place in 1949, when the first head of the Japanese National Railways was killed and dismembered by a locomotive. The narrative takes place over three periods, first in 1949 and then later in 1964 and 1989, each depicting a crucial step in Japan’s drive to promote itself as a paragon of peacefulness. Underlying these efforts is the legacy of violence. Power and Peace share their experiences both of their cities and of their unusual writing techniques with freelance producer and director of Push the Boat Out poetry festival, Jenny Niven.

This is a live event, with an author Q&A. If buying a ticket to watch the event in-person, some of the participants of this event will be on stage, and some will take part remotely and you’ll see them on a large screen in the venue. After the event, Chris Power will be doing an in-person book signing on the Festival site.