The Game in the Past
- Fiction
- Publisher: Resource Publications (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2016
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Publisher's Description
An off-hand speculation by ex-pat and professor, David Moran, sends his celebrated historian colleague, Graham Guade, on an investigation that peels back American use of, and protection for, Japanese doctors who committed unspeakable medical experiments in WWII. The inquiry into the legacy of those atrocities churns up murder and madness in both countries, and toys with the interplay of intimacy and career success, as well as accident and causality in history.
Endorsements (3)
“Get ready for a thrilling, fun, and thoughtful read. Japan in the postwar period; conspiracy; Japanese and Americans fooling each other and themselves; sex; American complicity in covering up Japanese war crimes; murder. Zeugner knows well the people, place, and times, and has the literary ability to bring them all alive.”
“I have read most of John Zeugner's always-engaging, creative prose, and The Game in the Past is the best of the lot. Here, we get classic Zeugner: continent-hopping, culture-jumping, language-switching . . . . [T]his is highly suggestive stuff, presented as an imagined history, which, if it had happened in the way that Game entices us to believe it did, is a terrifying message about human nature . . . . Game leads us to see that history won't bring the horror to light, but novel might.”
“There are things in the past too traumatic to be told. Worse, power knows how to mask its own unseemly roots. How and why the U.S. and Japan colluded to hide Japanese atrocities during World War II is a story that literally cannot be told--not as long as truth-tellers can be silenced. In this poignant and chilling novel, Zeugner shows why the historian's craft can only be completed in fiction. A stunning accomplishment.”
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