Faber takes a second helping of David Peace’s Munich trilogy
Faber has acquired the second novel in David Peace’s planned Manchester United-themed Munich trilogy. Publishing director Angus Cargill acquired world rights (excluding Japan) to Strangeways from Hamish Macaskill at the English Agency (Japan).
Publication for the new book is scheduled for May 2027 and follows Peace’s 2024 outing Munichs, which dramatised the 1958 crash of a plane carrying the Manchester United "Busby Babes" squad.
The new book is set three months after the Munich air disaster. As sympathy for Manchester United is already running out, manager Matt Busby is faced with the hard reality of having to rebuild a team and a club almost from scratch. Strangeways is the story of how Busby led the club from the ruins of May 1958 to their first European Cup triumph in 1968, helped by the likes of George Best, Denis Law and Bobby Charlton. The publisher added that it is also the "story of those that Munich left behind, the survivors and their families, and of a city and a country through 10 years of dramatic change".
Cargill said Strangeways "offers a scintillating alternative history of Britain from the late 1950s through to the mid-1970s". He continued: "A profoundly moving fictional exploration of a club both loved and hated with equal fervour, it underlines David’s unique place in the literary landscape and is set to be one of the great trilogies of our times."
Peace was born and brought up in Yorkshire, and currently lives in Tokyo. He is the author of 12 novels (the last eight of which have been published by Faber in the UK), including the Red Riding Quartet, adapted for television by Channel Four in 2009, and GB84, which was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. His previous novels centring around football are The Damned Utd – about Brian Clough’s short, disastrous reign at Leeds United – and Red or Dead, his Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted take on Liverpool manager Bill Shankly. Munichs was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year and the Charles Tyrwhitt Sports Book Awards.
