Angry White Pyjamas
An ordinary bloke becomes a deadly weapon.
Adrift in Tokyo, translating obscene rap lyrics for giggling Japanese high school girls,, "thirtynothing" Robert Twigger comes to a revelation about himself: He has never been fit nor brave. Guided by his roommates, Fat Frank and Chris, he sets out to cleanse his body and mind. Not knowing his fist from his elbow, the author is drawn into the world of Japanese martial arts, joining the Tokyo Riot Police on their yearlong, brutally demanding course of budotraining, where any ascetic motivation soon comes up against bloodstained "white pyjamas" and fractured collarbones. In Angry White Pyjamas, Twigger blends, the ancient with the modern--the ultratraditionalism, ritual, and violence of the dojo (training academy) with the shopping malls, nightclubs, and scenes of everyday Tokyo life in the 1990s--to provide a brilliant, bizarre glimpse of life in contemporary Japan.
Buy your own copy of Angry White Pyjamas for only £5.99 by clicking on the following link: Angry White Pyjamas: An Oxford Poet Trains with the Tokyo Riot Police
Friday, April 1, 2011 at 7:09PM Here's the link to the article in 2007 that records the waterstone's booksellers vote of Angry White Pyjamas as the best sportsbook of the last 25 years.
Sunday, March 7, 2010 at 10:57AM David Plummer, the non-fiction buying manager at Waterstone's - which is about the only book chain left in the UK after Borders and Books Etc went to the wall chose Angry White Pyjamas as one of four or five"Autobiographies for real-life lessons". It reads: "A poet from Oxford University trains with the Tokyo riot police and tells a tale of physical torture and spiritual transformation through the martial art of aikido." It is nice to be in there with Joe Simpson's Touching the Void and Valentino Rossi's autobiog ...
Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 12:29PM AWP was my first published book, and in terms of awards won, the most successful. I also got commissioned by Miramax to write a script which periodically gets optioned by enthusiastic film companies- though it has yet to be actually made into a film.
