The Damned Utd.

THE DAMNED UTD

David Peace

17 August 2006, £12.99 paperback original

Sunday is the loneliest bloody day of the f*cking week for the manager of a football club. The manager's office on a Sunday bloody morning, the loneliest f*cking place on earth if you lost the day before –

Leeds won yesterday – just, thanks to Michael Bates – but I'm still the only one here today in this empty office, on this empty corridor, under this empty stand -

Set in the bleak heart of the 1970s, The Damned Utd is a narrative of that decade seen through the extraordinary figure of Brian Clough: maverick motivator, and perhaps the greatest manager never to take charge of the England football team. Clough's ill-fated 44-day tenure at Elland Road and his grim obsession with the ghostly figure of Don Revie is the immediate subject of The Damned Utd; but the story that emerges is much more than that of a football club and a man driven by fear of failure and unquestionable genius. It's the story of a country imploding and a political and cultural landscape on the turn.

‘A unique combination of material and talent. I can't see it as less than remarkable - a bewitching mixture of youth and conviction - screened, the whole of it, through a lyrical sensibility'
David Storey, author of This Sporting Life

David Peace was born and brought up in Yorkshire. He taught English in Istanbul from 1992-1993 and then moved to Tokyo - where he has lived ever since. His work to date has concerned itself with the Yorkshire of the 70s and 80s – the place and time in which he grew up. His last novel, GB84, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. David will be visiting the UK in August and will be available for interview.

Please call Anna Pallai, Head of Publicity, on 020 7465 7556 or email anna.pallai@faber.co.uk if you'd like any more information.

Advance Praise for The Damned Utd

‘That is some book. It's so powerful. And brave. It strikes me as being more like music or painting. Certainly not like anything I've read before.'
Gordon Burn

‘David Peace has left behind the Miltonic sweep of the Red Riding Quartet and GB84, opted for a narrower focus. But Peace's trademark incantatory prose still zones the moral and physical textures of the 1970`s. And then there is that Leeds team, that damned united, the team that embodied those textures, slouching with menace from the shadows of a collapsing industrial base, unemployment, civil unrest. Into their hard man world comes Brian Clough, boozed-up martinet, loudmouth, genius. Brilliant.'
Eoin McNamee

‘The Damned Utd, which I read at a single sitting (11am to 11pm), is amazing: so much more than a work of ventriloquism. I can't imagine there's ever been a more extraordinary football novel in any language.'
Richard Williams, author of The Perfect 10

‘An extraordinary novel called The Damned Utd, an imaginative recreation by David Peace - whose name can be found on Granta's most recent list of the best young British novelists - of Brian Clough's strife-torn 44 days at Elland Road. Published later this summer, Peace's book is a daring voyage into the mind of Old Big Head and a chilling description of his unwinnable battle with the men Don Revie left behind.'
Guardian

‘Anyone familiar with the Red Riding Quartet will be itching to get their hands on more of Peace's fantastic prose. The Damned Utd is ... superbly toned and well researched. Peace has an exceptional ability to create the authentic voices of people involved in struggles against intense animosity - here, the intriguing subject of one of Britain's most eccentric football managers, put in charge of a team that neither wants him there nor cares who knows it. The tight prose and fervid tone gripped me throughout, making this one of the most unique and engaging books I've read this year.'
Ruth Atkins, Bookseller's Choice, The Bookseller

‘A rare example of the football fiction genre and ... an extraordinary piece of work, compelling, and, in some ways, shocking. ... You can hear Clough's nasal whine in every word, and you are also reminded of an ego the size of the arch at the new Wembley. ... A great read at any time of year.'
Gordon Kerr, THE Book Magazine

‘August 2006 will serve up what may be the greatest football novel for adults ever written, David Peace's The Damned Utd. Football fiction is hit and miss. Usually miss. But this is something all football fans should be able to look forward to.'
Tom Palmer, THE Book Magazine