From one of Granta's 2003 Best Young British Novelists comes this electrifying novel--fiction generated by fact--that revisits a series of shocking crimes committed in American Occupied Tokyo post-World War II.

On August 15th, 1946--the first anniversary of the Japanese surrender--the partially decomposed bodies of two women are found in the ruins of Zojoji Temple in central Tokyo. They have been raped and strangled--and they are only the first. More bodies will be found killed in the same way, and by the same hand. The irreverent, angry, despairing yet determined Detective Minami narrates the riveting story of the hunt for the Japanese Bluebeard, as well as telling his own story of struggles with haunting memories.

A story told with demanding power, written in a telegraphic, darkly lyrical language, shot through with wry humor, unblinking in its vision of the chaos left in the wake of war and of the moral and psychological corruption it engenders-- Tokyo Year Zero is blistering and unforgettable, a stunningly original crime novel.