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    The Devil of Nanking
    The Devil of Nanking
    The Devil of Nanking
    Audiobook12 hours

    The Devil of Nanking

    Written by Mo Hayder

    Narrated by Josephine Bailey and Simon Vance

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    With the redolent atmosphere of Ian Rankin and the spine-chilling characters of Thomas Harris, Mo Hayder's The Devil of Nanking, takes the reader on an electrifying literary ride from the palatial apartments of yakuza kingpins to deep inside the secret history of one of the twentieth century's most brutal events: the Nanking Massacre.

    A young Englishwoman obsessed with an indecipherable past, Grey comes to Tokyo seeking a lost piece of film footage of the notorious 1937 Nanking Massacre, footage some say never existed. Only one man can help Grey. A survivor of the massacre, he is now a visiting professor at a university in Tokyo. But he will have nothing to do with her. So Grey accepts a job in an upmarket nightspot, where a certain gangster may be the key to gaining the professor's trust. An old man in a wheelchair surrounded by a terrifying entourage, the gangster is rumored to rely on a mysterious elixir for his continued health.

    Taut, gritty, sexy, and harrowing, The Devil of Nanking is an incomparable literary thriller set in one of the world's most fascinating cities-Tokyo-from an internationally best-selling author.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJul 1, 2005
    ISBN9781400171620
    Author

    Mo Hayder

    MO HAYDER is the author of the internationally bestselling novels Birdman, The Treatment, The Devil of Nanking, Pig Island, Ritual, Skin, Gone—which won the 2012 Edgar Award for best novel—Hanging Hill and Poppet. In 2011, she received the Crime Writers’ Association Dagger in the Library award. She lives in the Cotswolds, England.

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    Reviews for The Devil of Nanking

    4/5

    46 ratings28 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Grey is a young woman who is driven to find the answer to her past. To find her answer she must seek a piece of rare film taken during the Nanking Massacre. This obsession takes her to Tokyo and into the world of hostess bars and the yakuza, the Japanese mafia. Chapters alternate with Grey's present and a memoir of an old man she meets written during the days of the Japanese invasion of Nanking.The atmosphere is dark and imposing. From the start the reader is aware of an impending doom. The mind races as we try to imagine what could be so horrible. The mounting tension is almost unbearable. Until finally, shock after shock is revealed and it was with pounding heart and shortness of breath I closed the book.This is quite different from Hayder's first two books. The historical aspect was wonderfully done. I have a particular interest in this period, of the Japanese war atrocities (Asian Holocaust) and particularly the 'Rape of Nanking'. Hayder writes a brutal, disturbing and heart-wrenching story. The pace is also slower than in the other books but when it comes to gruesome details Hayder sure knows how to pack a punch.I can't wait to read her next book "Pig Island" which sounds like it crosses over into the horror genre. All along I've thought her books have been somewhere between thriller and horror. The Devil of Nanking is recommended to both those interested in the Nanking Massacre and those who enjoy a heart-pounding thriller.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Although an interesting mix of mystery, history, and a little horror, I found the writing too simple and lacking detail to be truly gripping. I would have liked more history in the history and more local color in the modern day Tokyo. Now some people who like cutting to dispose of all that isn't story may like it that way, but I think stories that have modern renounce from historical actions require a bit more.
    • 5/5
      I read this book on a plane to Tokyo. I chose it because it seemed appropriate to my destination and it sounded like “a page turner” that would absorb my attention for a very long flight. What I got was something much deeper, something that spoke to me about the value that we put on life. I wouldn’t say that the plot held any surprises. I’m pretty sure that about a third of the way through the book, anyone will be pretty sure of where it’s going. However, the atmosphere & characterizations are just amazing. It had everything I love about contemporary Japanese “art”. What I mean is that you must be able to suspend disbelief, and allow yourself to just meander along, not really caring where you’re headed, like in a Murakami novel. There is also the attention to detail of a Miyazaki film - the old dragon of a house with the pan tiled roof, the Russian twins and their most believable accents, Jason leaning out the window to smoke a cigarette, Mickey Rourke shining in Grey’s window…. The story alternates between the narrative of the present-day heroine, Grey, whose name fits her character – a bit vague & passive – and the story of the atrocities committed by the Japanese in Nanking, China during WWII, as told by a survivor, Shi Chongming. Others have gone into plot detail here, so I’ll just say that this novel works great as a thriller, and that the characterizations and motivations are intriguing. I had tears in my eyes as I read the last line, “ Because, …, if you have learned anything at all, you have learned that in this world, none of us has very long.”
    • 3/5
      Geschichtlich interessant - ich wusste wenig über das Massaker der Japaner an der chinesischen Bevölkerung im Nanking von 1937 - ist die Story trotzdem sher lange zäh. Die Figuren sind teilweise sehr freakig, die Auflösung am Schluss dann doch interessant und auch spannend. Tokyo bleibt aber nicht eines meiner Lieblingsbücher von Mo Hayder.
    • 4/5
      Read this book during the fall, I found it interesting and tough to read. The story was well written and thought out, it was gripping and thought provoking. I have encouraged both my son and husband to read it.
    • 1/5
      I listened to the book I found I couldn't connect with the narrator Chinese accent. Found this nothing like hayders other books just didn't get into the story
    • 5/5
      This is a beautiful novel that’s worth the time. The narrator was just amazing.
    • 5/5
      I can’t imagine the amount of research and dedication it took to write this indescribable piece of art. It is by no means a “feel good” read but is so full of emotion, detail and intrigue woven together to create a beautiful heartfelt set of stories into one. If Ms.Hayder we’re still with us, this is the one I would most like to sit and discuss with her. Absolutely incredible.
    • 5/5
      Ein Mädchen das Nach Japan fliegt um einen Chinesischen Professor zu finden, um dann endlich die Wahrheit zu erfahren, was wirklich geschehen war und dafür risiken eingeht die unbeschreiblich sind, das ist der absolute Wahnsinn. Das Buch ist spannend bis zur letzten Seite und ein muss für jeden, der mal einen erneuten Denkanstoß braucht, um sich mit der Geschichte auseinander zu setzen.
    • 4/5
      This was a very good book, though the subject matter is disturbing. It builds the suspense up slowly and you pretty much think you know what the big secret is, and then it's worse than that (one of the characters even tells the main character it will be that way, and he is right). Haunting but fascinating.
    • 2/5
      As close as it can get to a caricature of Japan and Tokyo today.I found the writing is a bit awkward and weak.The scenes of World War II and the massacre of Nanking are among the best of the book though.
    • 4/5
      The best Hayder I've read so far. Dreadful, as in inspiring dread, and tight as a drum.
    • 5/5
      Dark and absolutely engaging, though perhaps not for the squeamish or easily creeped out. This book was the first in a long time to give me the jitters, and it will absolutely suck you in. Be prepared to be confused a bit along the way, but it's a pleasure to see it all coming together--not in a contrived way or forcefully either. I'd highly recommend this, but don't expect your average suspense novel.
    • 5/5
      A fabulous book. The author takes the modern day Tokyo demi-monde and inter-twines it with the story of the Rape of Nanking, a WWII Japanese atrocity. The writing is so smooth you can move from one strand to the other and they seem to be the same until the details alert you to the change. Almost always one strand is better than the other, in this case both are wonderful. The modern thread focuses on a young English girl who is both the victim and the perpetrator of a modern personal atrocity. She had been raised in an information bubble by her parents so that she had very little understanding of human life. When something gets past their vigilance and she has a moment of sexual experimentation -- her life becomes a tragedy. She has come to Japan searching for a man she read about in a book on the Rape of Nanking, and a specific incident that she has emulated in her personal drama. She is trying to prove to herself and her personal Greek Chorus that he exists, that the event happened and that she isn't crazy. She is also looking for redemption and forgiveness.The man in question is now old and is a professor at Todai University. He is reluctant to discuss the past, or to admit to any truths. Her visit triggers him to read his diary which he kept through the days when Nanking fell and the devil was loose. The second strand is the diary with the unfolding story of his life before and the Rape of Nanking once the city fell.In the modern day the 2 characters are also engaged in trying to learn the secret traditional-medicine cure that an old and dangerous Yakuza boss uses to prolong his life.The characters are quirky and interesting, there are many mysteries and the many layers are revealed slowly and quite well. The setting is also well done with the contrast of modern Tokyo and the strange, giant brooding, crumbling house that the English girl moves into. It functions much like the old, haunted, decaying mansion in gothic books, but with a Japanese viewpoint.The two strands come together, and the Yakuza boss and his cure are also tied in. Very well done, a page turner that started slowly and then became hard to put down.
    • 5/5
      This is a great thriller. It's partially told by a young Englishwoman who has an interesting past which leads her to be obsessed with the Nanking massacre, and partially by the journal of a survivor of Nanking. Going back and forth between modern-day Japan and 1937 China, the story unfolds unhurriedly but also unrelentingly. Terrific storytelling.
    • 4/5
      Beautiful writing... I didn't quite completely 'get' the main character's fixation with the atrocities in Nanking but otherwise she is quite interesting.I love the way two separate stories intersect at the end.Also liked the historical background of the 'rape of Nanking' - I've read other stories of the Japanese invasion of China in the 1930s and this fits historically with with everything else I've read
    • 4/5
      Description from Fantastic Fiction:Student Grey Hutchins comes to Tokyo seeking a rare piece of film showing the notorious Nanking Massacre in which, in one city, the Imperial Japanese Army butchered up to 300,000 civilians. Only one man can help her, a survivor of the massacre, and now a visiting professor at the prestigious University of Todai in Tokyo; a man who is rumoured to possess documentary evidence of Nanking.But first Grey must gain his trust. Desperate and alone, she accepts a job as a hostess in an upmarket nightspot catering for Japanese businessmen and wealthy gangsters. One gangster dominates - an old man in a wheelchair guarded by a terrifying entourage - who is said to rely on a powerful elixir for his continued wealth and well-being. It is an elixir that others want for themselves - at any price.My Thoughts:When you read a book by Mo Hayder you know what you are going to get. Her stories are gritty and quite scary. This story focuses on the massacre of Nanking which I knew nothing about at all. The story is told by Grey a student and Chongming who lived through the massacre. Both stories blend together to a very scary finale.At first I didn’t think I was going to get very far with this book as I struggle with books that have a war connection but I found that I ploughed through the book quite quickly. There was something compelling that made me want to read futher. With Mo Hayder there are no holds barred and the story takes on a very gritty, scary turn. This book is not for the faint hearted. The book starts very darkly and the gloom doesn’t lift at all which I think gave it’s appeal. Dark and brooding, graphic and violent at times, a part historical, part thriller that will keep you hooked until the very end. I couldn’t expect anything less from this author.
    • 5/5
      The Devil of Nanking is as dark, grotesque and beautiful as a Breughel painting or a Goya etching. The surface story, a young English woman searching for proof that things she remembers actually do exist and she is not crazy, a search that eventually leads her to Tokyo, makes for a good story in itself. She lands in Japan almost totally broke and must change in order to support herself. This makes for an excellent story of character growth.The Tokyo described by Ms. Hayder is certainly believable, but it is also just fanciful enough to meet the requirements of the plot. Just as with the artists alluded to, once you start examining the scenery in the novel, nasty and startling details start emerging from the shadows: crime world figures are deeply embedded into the story and many of the characters have secrets they cannot forget yet would like to.Some of the beauty of the story is the author’s rich prose. There is an economy of words, yet each word seems carefully chosen to convey the fullest meaning and even subtle nuances in character are delivered without prolonged biographies.One of the major devices used by Ms. Hayder is jumping back and forth between Nanking of 1937 and Tokyo of the story’s now. I appreciated the way she kept a certain continuity between these jumps by having similar settings: if the scene described in China was a winter scene, it was snowing in Tokyo; a nice literary device that lent itself to visualizing these settings. The story of what happened in Nanking was powerful enough to propel me through the story. The writing was fluid enough that I needed no other force to keep me going. Between the two, I had trouble stopping reading. The ultimate secret was not too obscure and the ending of the story confirmed all my suppositions as to what it was. Again mirroring comes into play here, but in this case, it was mirroring of two of the main characters pasts that are mirrored.Because of the disturbing nature of the plot, this story will not be every mystery readers’ liking. Yet, like the artists I’ve mentioned above with their beautiful but disturbing images, the appeal of this work may be broad enough to attract non-mystery readers as well. Not quite a work of historical fiction, the sacking of Nanking and the massacre of Chinese civilians by Japanese soldier did occur. I believed all the characters in this work and even got emotionally involved with them. The visual descriptions were very satisfying and the dialog was very well done. The overall impact of the story was great enough that I’m going to give this a four and a half star rating. If the ultimate secret had been better shielded, I would consider this a full five stars.
    • 5/5
      This book was absolutley riveting. It was suspenseful and genuinely scary in places. I loved the excerpts from the diary of Sho Chonming and it was informative about a part of history I know little about. It features one of the best endings I can remember reading. Superb.
    • 5/5
      great book that tells the truth
    • 4/5
      Grey is a young English woman obsessed with the horrific war crimes committed against the Chinese civilians by the Japanese army during the Nanking Massacre in 1937. With her obsession is bordering on madness, she has abandoned her university studies and sold off her few meager belongings, in order to travel to Japan in search of an elderly Chinese professor currently living in Tokyo. Shi Chongming lived in Nanking during the war, and is rumored to have a 16mm film taken during the atrocities that shows something that has been haunting Grey for almost ten years - something she swears she read about in a book that everyone denies existed. Shi Chongming at first refuses to help her, but relents when he learns she is working as a hostess in a Tokyo nightclub that is visited by the Japanese mafia, the yakuza. The elderly leader of the yakuza has a miraculous elixir that is rumored to cure diseases and give the old man virtual immortality, and Shi Chongming will allow Grey to view his film only if she will find out what the elixir contains. The narrative is divided between Grey's experiences as a hostess in a nightclub in modern Tokyo and a journal kept by Chongming during the war. It is a haunting and deftly crafted novel that blends historical fiction in with the crime-thriller elements. I had doubts as to how the author would pull together the seemingly disparate plot threads, but in the end everything came together in a supremely satisfying way. Hayder delivers a powerful narrative with the perfect emotional punch at the finish . Grey and Shi Chongming are both troubled, complex characters searching for redemption and struggling with the past, and the novel's oft-repeated question, is ignorance the same as evil? explored in endlessly painful and intriguing varieties. Recommended.
    • 4/5
      Mo Hayder has written a true page turner that will have you running to the library to learn more about the true accounts of what happened in Nanking.
    • 4/5
      When I read Hayder’s previous two books, Birdman and The Treatment, I thought they were the scariest books I had ever read. But the Devil of Nanking surpasses both of those works for inducing nightmares. That doesn’t mean I didn’t like it; in fact I thought it was brilliantly constructed. It just seemed so plausible that I could see it happening just the way she wrote it and things that are realistic are always much scarier than scenarios that are only remotely possible. The story centers on Grey (the only name we ever learn) who travels to Tokyo from Great Britain to talk to a Chinese professor of linguistics, Shi Chongming, about the Japanese invasion of China in 1937. It’s not clear at the start why Grey is so anxious to see a film the professor is rumoured to possess. The film was hinted at in an article about the atrocities committed by the Japanese troops in Nanking. Grey has been studying this era for years (nine years, seven months and eighteeen days to be exact) and she spends almost all her money to fly to Japan to see Professor Shi. Initially he rebuffs her, denying there is a film and refusing to give her any information. After spending a night on a bench in a park, Grey encounters a young American man who invites her to rent a room in the house he is in if she is staying in Tokyo. Grey refuses but after Professor Shi says he will contact her in a week she gives the telephone number the young man gave her and then goes to ask for a room in the house. As well as the young man from the park (Jason), two Russian twins live in the house. The three of them work in a Japanese nightclub that is owned by Strawberry. Strawberry is convinced she is the double of Marilyn Monroe. The club is called Some Like it Hot and there is a giant statue of Marilyn suspended outside the club. They convince Gray she can also work in the club and earn lots of money to pay for her stay in Tokyo. Grey, for reasons that are only hinted at, has a very poor body image and she doubts if she can handle being a hostess but she is desperate for money. Strawberry hires her and when Grey asks the group of businessmen she is entertaining if their fathers fought in China she is an immediate hit. The chapters forming Grey’s story are interspersed with excerpts from Professor Shi’s diary that he kept in 1937 while in Nanking. Grey and Professor Shi come to an arrangement whereby he will show her the film if she finds out what ingredient a Japanese gangster uses to restore his health and prolong his life. The gangster sometimes comes to the club and sometimes invites hostesses back to his apartment. Grey starts looking for this mysterious substance but is sidetracked when she and Jason become lovers. Grey is content in a way she never has been but of course it does not last. Then the horror really starts. Hayder conveys the ambiance of Tokyo so authentically that I almost believed I was there. She is obviously drawing upon her own experiences when she lived in Asia, including being a hostess in a Tokyo nightclub. Almost as realistic are the details in Professor Shi’s diaries, which must be the result of extensive research since she is not old enough to have been alive in 1937.
    • 5/5
      The hardest book I've ever read. The scariest. The saddest.
      I saw someone ask about content warnings on its page:
      CW: War crimes, rape, murder, gore, child death, torture, cannibalism, self harm, sex between minors, medical abuse, ableist and racial slurs, transphobic commentary and there's probably others but those are the ones I know for sure of.

      I listened to the audio book and highly recommend it. Josephine Bailey and Simon Vance do an excellent job of accents and voice changes from character to character in the dialogue. There were times I was shocked that it was only Josephine reading their chapters because it honestly sounded like separate people.

      This book is part war story, part mystery, part thriller, and part literary novel but that said it is all horror, as far as I am concerned. The fear I felt as the tension rose, as the characters neared their doom...it was almost a physical thing I could touch as I listened.
      I cried, shivered, even had hives from anxiety as I listened. It didn't matter that I knew what was going to happen - knowing it was coming, having an idea of how horrible it was, made the suspense even worse.
      Mo Hayder does an excellent job of deciding what to show and what not to show in order to built the layers of dread and fear.
      I felt like I couldn't breathe in parts because I was so worried about the characters.
      Listened to the book in a 24 hour period (at 1.2x time). I just couldn't stop. I had to know what was going to happen, how it was going to happen.

      I recommend for folks who have an interest in Chinese or Japanese history, who enjoy movies like Ninth Gate or Cigarette Burns (wherein characters are hunting down a rare book/movie and learn quickly there is danger in doing so), or want to be shaken to their bones.
      I will never get some of these images out of my head...
    • 2/5
      I hated the Grey backstory. I'm going to have to read a nonfiction book to find out about this period of history because I couldn't get through this one.
    • 5/5
      This is one of the most distinctive mysteries you will ever read. In current day Tokyo, a woman seeks information about an event that happened during World War II. She involves herself with various Japanese customs and characters, and slowly but surely gets closer to the scholar she needs to talk to about the war. Meanwhile, flashbacks put the reader in Nanking, as the Japanese Army marches in and involves itself in the most brutal atrocities imaginable. Then, in the climax of the volume, the two elements are linked! Extraordinary work of historical research and imagination.
    • 4/5
      Not for the faint of heart. But it does grab you - absolutely riveting.
    • 4/5
      Rooted in true events, this is a gut-wrenching novel about a subject it seems many of us didn't learn about in school. The event known colloquially as "the rape of Nanking", if you haven't heard of it, will move you to your core.

      This groundbreaking novel tells the fictional story of a young English woman, Grey, who is attempting to track down a piece of film she has only heard about in rumors. Through her search, we are taken back and forth in time between present day and WWII China. In her dogged digging for answers, Grey puts herself in danger's way by taking a hostess position at a local club bar known for being frequented by Japan's notoriously-deadly gang, the Yakuza.

      Absorbing and chilling, lovers of learning about history through fictional stories won't be able to put this one down.