Never before published in the U.S., GB84 will be launched in 2014 alongside two other novels by David Peace: The Damned Utd and Red or Dead
In taut and gripping prose that often feels like the relentless text of a surveillance report, GB84 tells the story of the British coal miner's strike of 1984—including the actual bombings, riots and protests that brought the country to the brink of civil war.
Called by its author "fiction based on fact," the book depicts a real-life 1984 more violently dystopian than even Orwell imagined. Slowly starving strikers find themselves pitted against a prime minister—Margaret Thatcher—determined to crush them . . . a police force willing to use infiltration and violence to achieve her will . . . and equally hungry scabs who need a job . . .
Mixing real events and characters with the voices of the increasingly desperate strikers, the book becomes a stirring saga of courage against overwhelmingly sinister forces, and paints a searing and haunting portrait of events that changed the course of British history.