Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan’s Disaster Zone

　　被海水吞蝕的破敗地區，亡者以其他方式再生，生者的回憶、苦痛、掙扎彷彿一縷魂魄如影隨形，成為海嘯過後揮之不去的夢魘。

　　2011年3月11日，一場巨大的強震激起一個120英尺高的海嘯，重重砸入日本東北海岸。當海面退離時，超過18,000人溺斃、被燒死或遭受輾壓致死。

　　這是自長崎的原子彈後，日本遭遇到最巨大的人命傷亡事件。它引發了全國危機和核電廠的熔毀。即便日後緊急情況稍微減緩，災難的創傷仍繼續以各種怪誕方式表達出來。

　　屢獲殊榮的英國記者Richard Lloyd Parry於地震時正在東京生活，之後進災區報導了六年時光。在那裡，他遇到了幽靈和鬧鬼的故事。他遇見一個牧師，對被死者附身的人進行驅魔。他發現自己一次又一次地被一個受到最大損失的村莊吸引，一個種種謎團所折磨的社區。

　　在海嘯前的那一刻，當地孩子們在學校操場上到底發生了什麼事？他們的老師為什麼不把孩子們疏散到安全的地方？為什麼難以忍受的真相就這麼被掩蓋起來？

　　本書是非小說文學的經典，一場令人心碎並被細膩記錄下如史詩般的悲劇，透過對那些倖存之人的適切訪談。它講述了一個國家如何面對災難的故事，以及在廢墟中尋求慰藉的慘淡掙扎。(文/博客來編譯)

　　On 11 March 2011, a massive earthquake sent a 120-foot-high tsunami smashing into the coast of north-east Japan. By the time the sea retreated, more than 18,000 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. He met a priest who performed exorcisms on people possessed by the spirits of the dead. And he found himself drawn back again and again to a village which 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 school playground 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 classic of literary non-fiction, a heart-breaking and intimate account of an epic tragedy, told through the personal accounts of those who lived through it. It tells the story of how a nation faced a catastrophe, and the bleak struggle to find consolation in the ruins.

作者簡介

　　Richard Lloyd Parry，作家、駐外調查記者、《泰晤士報》亞洲地區主編，1995年起開始在東京生活。2005年獲What The Papers Say Awards頒發英國年度最佳駐外記者獎。著有《In the Time of Madness》，《People Who Eat Darkness》入圍2011年山謬強森非小說獎初選。