Liv Grimstad is riding on a suburban train in Sydney, Australia in 1975 when she takes notice of the old man sitting opposite her. Though his features are different, she recognizes that man by the piercing look in his cornflower-blue eyes.

She is convinced it is Donald Meissner, the man who has haunted her memory since they both worked at the German Embassy in Tokyo during the war. He was the beast who tormented and persecuted people, sending them into the hands of the Japanese Military Police. She does not confront him at first but rather sets out on a journey of detective work to uncover this man.

LIV is a personal detective story and thrilling historical mystery set in Australia in 1975 and Tokyo in 1945. But it tells a universal tale about how the past bears on our present … and future.

"LIV is a gripping mystery, of a present haunted by the past, but also a profoundly moral book, asking of the reader: what would you do? In this, LIV deserves comparison with novels as great as An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro and The Reader by Bernhard Schlink."—David Peace, author of Tokyo Year Zero

Liv Grimstad is riding on a suburban train in Sydney, Australia in 1975 when she takes notice of the old man sitting opposite her. Though his features are different, she recognizes that man by the piercing look in his cornflower-blue eyes.

She is convinced it is Donald Meissner, the man who has haunted her memory since they both worked at the German Embassy in Tokyo during the war. He was the beast who tormented and persecuted people, sending them into the hands of the Japanese Military Police. She does not confront him at first but rather sets out on a journey of detective work to uncover this man.

LIV is a personal detective story and thrilling historical mystery set in Australia in 1975 and Tokyo in 1945. But it tells a universal tale about how the past bears on our present … and future.

"LIV is a gripping mystery, of a present haunted by the past, but also a profoundly moral book, asking of the reader: what would you do? In this, LIV deserves comparison with novels as great as An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro and The Reader by Bernhard Schlink."—David Peace, author of Tokyo Year Zero