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In August 1994, Manic Street Preachers released The Holy Bible, a dark, fiercely intelligent album that explored such themes as mental illness, murder and war. Richey Edwards, the band''s lyricist and motive force, vanished five months later; he was never found. In his absence The Holy Bible entered the rock canon alongside Joy Division''s Closer and Nirvana''s In Utero, the valedictory works of troubled young men.

This book tells the dramatic story of Manic Street Preachers'' masterpiece. Tracing the album''s origins in the Valleys, an industrialised region of South Wales where the band spent their formative years, the author argues that The Holy Bible can be seen as a meditation on the uses and abuses of history.