Red Army Faction Blues

A coalition government. A widely mistrusted ruling elite. Riots in the streets and heavy-handed police tactics. Welcome to West Berlin, 1967.

Undercover agent Peter Urbach is tasked with infiltrating a group of radical students whose anti-consumerist message is not without propaganda value on both sides of the Wall. Soon, high-minded political activism will move to the terrorism of Baader, Meinhoff and the Red Army Faction.

1989, the Wall is coming down and Urbach is breaking cover to track down Peter Green, the genius behind British blues rock band Fleetwood Mac. There’s unfinished business to resolve after their chance encounter twenty years earlier at a party in Germany. What exactly did Peter Green walk into that day? They say he has never been the same since.

‘As a work of historical fiction, Wilson’s prose is artfully light of touch where exposition is concerned. Concise summaries of ideas—from Situationism to the writings of Marcuse—fit naturally into the dialogue of his young revolutionary characters, informing the novitiate reader whilst remaining perfectly unobtrusive to the informed… as a novel that is willing to both engage with radical politics and explore postmodern literary form, Red Army Faction Blues is a highly commendable work, audaciously conceived and well executed.’ – The Review of Contemporary Fiction

‘British author Wilson brings the tumult of 1967 West Berlin vividly to life in this intriguing period thriller. Resonances with the Occupy Wall Street movement make this novel’s themes timely.’ – Publishers Weekly

‘[Ada Wilson's] aim in this beautifully-written novel is to write about rock music in the same way that David Peace wrote about football in The Damned United, as a mirror of contemporary history, as a glass through which to view the world. This multilayered realism, achieved through placing actual people and places under fiction’s microscope, certainly underlines the novel’s contemporary echoes of unrest, surveillance and a sense that things are getting a little out-of-hand politically and culturally and nobody quite knows what’s going on. Ring any bells?’ – Yorkshire Post

‘Red Army Faction Blues has the kind of lean, mean sparseness that would please Elmore Leonard. Hoorah for a stylishly-written book.’ – Bradford T&A