Ghosts of the Tsunami, Richard Lloyd Parry
Ghosts of the Tsunami, Richard Lloyd Parry
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Ghosts of the Tsunami
Death and Life in Japan's Disaster Zone

Author: Richard Lloyd Parry

Narrator: Simon Vance

Unabridged: 7 hr 47 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/24/2017


Synopsis

"In an understated performance, Simon Vance details one of the stunning tragedies arising from the tsunami that struck Japan in 2011...Vance's steady pacing, crisp enunciation, and careful inflection enhance the weight of the story, which moves between reportage and interviews, and ultimately reveals unsettling truths about this particular disaster." — AudioFile Magazine

Masterfully narrated by Simon Vance, winner of 14 Audie Awards and 61 Earphone Awards, comes the heartbreaking true story of a natural disaster and the resilience of Japan.

the definitive account of what happened, why, and above all how it felt, when catastrophe hit Japan—by the Japan correspondent of The Times (London) and author of People Who Eat Darkness

On March 11, 2011, a powerful earthquake sent a 120-foot-high tsunami smashing into the coast of northeast Japan. By the time the sea retreated, more than eighteen thousand people had been crushed, burned to death, or drowned.

It was Japan’s greatest single loss of life since the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. It set off a national crisis and the meltdown of a nuclear power plant. And even after the immediate emergency had abated, the trauma of the disaster continued to express itself in bizarre and mysterious ways.

Richard Lloyd Parry, an award-winning foreign correspondent, lived through the earthquake in Tokyo and spent six years reporting from the disaster zone. There he encountered stories of ghosts and hauntings, and met a priest who exorcised the spirits of the dead. And he found himself drawn back again and again to a village that had suffered the greatest loss of all, a community tormented by unbearable mysteries of its own.

What really happened to the local children as they waited in the schoolyard in the moments before the tsunami? Why did their teachers not evacuate them to safety? And why was the unbearable truth being so stubbornly covered up?

Ghosts of the Tsunami is a soon-to-be classic intimate account of an epic tragedy, told through the accounts of those who lived through it. It tells the story of how a nation faced a catastrophe, and the struggle to find consolation in the ruins.

About Richard Lloyd Parry

Richard Lloyd Parry is the Asia editor and Tokyo bureau chief of The Times (London) and the author of People Who Eat Darkness and In the Time of Madness.

About Simon Vance

Simon Vance is the critically acclaimed narrator of approximately 400 audiobooks, winner of 27 AudioFile Earphones Awards, and a 12-time Audie Award-winner. He won an Audie in 2006 in the category of Science Fiction and was named the 2011 Best Voice in Biography and History and in 2010 Best Voice in Fiction by AudioFile magazine.   Vance has been a narrator for the past 25 years, and also worked for many years as a BBC Radio presenter and newsreader in London.  Some of his best-selling and most praised audiobook performances include Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies (an Audie award-winner), Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander series (all 21 titles), the new productions of Frank Herbert’s original Dune series, and Rob Gifford’s China Road (an AudioFile 2007 Book of the Year). Vance lives near San Francisco with his wife and two sons.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Lark on January 30, 2019

Remarkable reportage from a writer of deep empathy and compassion. It's clear that Parry is very familiar with Japan. There just arent that many non native Japanese speakers who could have conducted these interviews, which must have required such sensitivity and such an appreciation for how language......more

Goodreads review by Yun on January 18, 2019

Ghosts of the Tsunami is the tale of the human toll that resulted from the powerful 2011 earthquake that rocked Japan and the subsequent tsunami that killed thousands of people. It is told through the eyes of a small town in northern Japan, with a focus on its elementary school and the mystery of wh......more

Goodreads review by Peter on November 11, 2018

The March 2011 earthquake was the biggest ever known to have struck Japan, and the fourth most powerful in the history of seismology. It knocked the earth six and a half inches off its axis and along with the resulting tsunami, caused over $210 billion of damage. Worst of all, it was responsible for......more

Goodreads review by Paltia on December 13, 2019

Incredibly moving telling of the 2011 earthquake that sent a 120 foot tsunami over the northeast coast of Japan. Parry’s writing brings the events and people to life with all the anxieties, despair, anger and sorrow imaginable. I found the Reverend Taio Kaneta’s description of his experiences poigna......more


Quotes

"In an understated performance, Simon Vance details one of the stunning tragedies arising from the tsunami that struck Japan in 2011. He expertly balances the details of the author's heavily researched investigation and the emotionally charged survivors' stories. ...Vance's steady pacing, crisp enunciation, and careful inflection enhance the weight of the story, which moves between reportage and interviews, and ultimately reveals unsettling truths about this particular disaster." -AudioFile

"A lively and nuanced narrative by the British journalist Richard Lloyd Parry, the longtime and widely respected correspondent in Tokyo for the London Times. Though in part he presents vivid accounts of what was a very complex event, with this book he wisely stands back . . . to consider the essence of the story . . . Heartbreaking." —Simon Winchester, The New York Review of Books

"Powerful . . . Lloyd Parry's account is truly haunting, and remains etched in the brain and heart long after the book is over." —Lisa Levy, New Republic

"Richard Lloyd Parry wrote People Who Eat Darkness, easily one of the best works of true crime in the past decade . . . [Ghosts of the Tsunami is] a stunning portrait of devastation and its aftermath." –Kevin Nguyen, GQ

"A wrenching chronicle of a disaster that, six years later, still seems incomprehensible . . . Any writer could compile a laundry list of the horrors that come in the wake of a disaster; Lloyd Parry's book is not that . . . Lloyd Parry writes about the survivors with sensitivity and a rare kind of empathy; he resists the urge to distance himself from the pain in an attempt at emotional self-preservation." –Michael Schaub, NPR.org

"Remarkably written and reported . . . a spellbinding book that is well worth contemplating in an era marked by climate change and natural disaster." –Kathleen Rooney, The Chicago Tribune

"[Lloyd Parry's] writing is always graceful and filled with compassion." —Adam Hochschild, The American Scholar

"[The book’s] testimonies are almost unbearably moving . . . In an understated way, Ghosts of the Tsunami is not only a vivid, heartfelt description of the disaster, but a subtle portrait of the Japanese nation." —Craig Brown, The Mail on Sunday

“The stories that Lloyd Parry gives voice to are not only deeply personal but . . . accompanied with essential historical and cultural context that enable the reader to understand the roles of death, grief, and responsibility in Japanese culture—and why some survivors may always remain haunted.” —Amanda Winterroth, Booklist (starred review)

“A brilliant, unflinching account . . . Singular and powerfully strange . . . It is hard to imagine a more insightful account of mass grief and its terrible processes. This book is a future classic of disaster journalism, up there with John Hersey’s Hiroshima.” —Rachel Cooke, The Guardian

“Lloyd Parry combines an analytical dissection of the disaster in all its ramifying web of detail with a novelist’s deft touch for characterization . . . Heartrending . . . it will remain as documentation to the inestimable power of nature and the pitiful frailty of our own.” —Roger Pulvers, The Japan Times

"Pensive travels in the wake of one of the world's most devastating recent disasters, the Tohoku earthquake of 2011 . . . The author's narrative is appropriately haunted and haunting . . . A sobering and compelling narrative of calamity." –Kirkus Reviews


Awards

  • Audie Award Finalist
  • Folio Prize Winner
  • The Economist Magazine Books of the Year
  • Folio Prize Shortlist