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Munichs

A Novel

Audiobook
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 12 weeks
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 12 weeks
In 1958, Manchester United was flying high: the best-known soccer team in the world and reigning English champions, the team was led by a bright young group of star players nicknamed the "Busby Babes" after their charismatic manager Matt Busby. But on a snowy afternoon that February, a plane carrying the team back from a European Cup match crashed on takeoff in Munich, killing twenty-three people—including eight Manchester United players and three team officials. The accident destroyed the team, traumatized fans all over the world, and devastated the tight-knit community in Manchester.
In this hypnotic and deeply moving novel, renowned novelist David Peace reimagines the crash and its aftermath, dramatizing the deep scars it left on British society. Moving between the fictionalized voices of survivors, including players, their family members, and Busby himself, Munichs powerfully interprets the struggles of a team, a city, and a nation to recover and rise again.
Peace's novels have been lauded as "incantatory" (Los Angeles Times), "ambitious and heartbreaking" (NPR), and "the stuff of great literature" (New York Times Book Review). With Munichs, he has crafted another extraordinary novel, one that intimately explores the reverberations of trauma and the power of community in the wake of tragedy.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from August 19, 2024
      Peace (the Red Riding Quartet) scores with a deeply moving account—­based on a true story—of a British sports team overcoming a deadly accident. On Feb. 6, 1958, a London-bound flight transporting the Manchester United football club crashes on takeoff at Munich Airport, killing eight members of the talented young squad. The injured are rushed to a local hospital. Assistant manager Jimmy Murphy flies to Munich to visit the survivors and returns home with two teammates who miraculously survived the crash without serious injuries. The days that follow are filled with official inquiries, emergency surgeries, bedside vigils, and funerals, but the heart of the story is Jimmy’s attempt to rebuild the team in time for the FA Cup final. Peace renders Jimmy’s campaign with rich dialogue, as in veteran player Ernie Taylor’s response to Jimmy’s attempt to coax him out of retirement: “I’m very sorry about everything that has happened to you like, you know, with the crash like, and I know you’re desperate, and I still appreciate you asking us like, but I just don’t think it would work, it wouldn’t be right like.” Bringing his large cast of characters—the players, their families, the air crew, the investigators, and the hospital staff—to vivid life, Peace captures all the conflicting emotions of people trying to rally in the wake of a senseless tragedy. Readers should pounce.

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  • English

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