Fuminori Nakamura
1) The Thief
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English
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Description
A literary crime masterpiece that follows a Japanese pickpocket lost to the machinations of fate. Bleak and oozing existential dread, The Thief is simply unforgettable.
The Thief is a seasoned pickpocket. Anonymous in his tailored suit, he weaves in and out of Tokyo crowds, stealing wallets from strangers so smoothly sometimes he doesn’t even remember the snatch. Most people are just a blur to him, nameless faces from...
The Thief is a seasoned pickpocket. Anonymous in his tailored suit, he weaves in and out of Tokyo crowds, stealing wallets from strangers so smoothly sometimes he doesn’t even remember the snatch. Most people are just a blur to him, nameless faces from...
Author
Language
English
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Description
"Japanese literary sensation Fuminori Nakamura's latest novel is as a dark look into human psyche--what turns someone into a killer? Can it be something as small as a suggestion? Turn this page, and you may forfeit your entire life. A confessional diary implicates its reader in a heinous crime, and reveals with disturbing honesty the psychological motives of a killer. With My Annihilation, Fuminori Nakamura, master of literary noir, has constructed...
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English
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"Two detectives. Two identical women. One dead body-rapidly becoming two, then three, then four. All knotted up in Japan's underground BDSM scene and kinbaku, a form of rope bondage which bears a complex cultural history of spirituality, torture, cleansing, and sacrifice. As Togashi, a junior member of the police force, investigates the murder of a kinbaku instructor, he finds himself unable to resist his own private transgressive desires. In contrast,...
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English
Description
A young writer is assigned a difficult task by his editor: he is to write an investigative biography of a death row inmate named Yudai Kiharazaka, a thirty-five-year-old photographer who has been convicted of the murders of two women. Kiharazaka's victims--or his "models"--had been burned alive while the photographer tried to capture the perfect picture of their essences. But trying to unearth the truth about Kiharazaka will force the writer to grapple...
Author
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English
Description
The second book by prize-winning Japanese novelist Fuminori Nakamura to be available in English translation, a follow-up to 2012's critically acclaimed The Thief - another fantastically creepy, electric literary thriller that explores the limits of human depravity, and the powerful human instinct to resist evil. When Fumihiro Kuki is eleven years old, his elderly, enigmatic father calls him into his study for a meeting. "I created you to be a cancer...
6) Cult X
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English
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"The magnum opus by Akutagawa Prize-winner Fuminori Nakamura, Cult X is a story that dives into the psychology of fringe religion, obsession, and social disaffection. When Toru Narazaki's girlfriend, Ryoko, disappears, he tries to track her down, despite the warnings of a private detective he's hired to find her. Ryoko's past is shrouded in mystery, but the one concrete clue to her whereabouts is a previous address where she lived: in a compound in...
7) The kingdom
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English
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"Yurika is a freelancer in the Tokyo underworld. She poses as a prostitute, carefully targeting potential Johns, selecting powerful and high-profile men. When she is alone with them, she drugs them and takes incriminating photos to sell for blackmail purposes. She knows very little about the organization she's working for, and is perfectly satisfied with the arrangement, as long as it means she doesn't have to reveal anything about her identity, either....
8) The gun
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English
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Description
"On a nighttime walk along a Tokyo riverbank, a young man named Nishikawa stumbles on a dead body, besides which is lying a gun. From the moment Nishikawa makes the decision to take the gun, the world around him blurs. Knowing he possesses the gun brings an intoxicating sense of purpose to his dull university life. But Nishikawa's personal entanglements are becoming unexpectedly complicated: he finds himself romantically involved with two women, while...
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English
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Description
"Winner of the Akutagawa Prize, Japan's most prestigious literary award. An unnamed Tokyo taxi driver has experienced a rupture from his everyday life. As he picks up fares that take him through Tokyo's night streets, offering him glimpses into the lives of his passengers, he can't escape his own nihilistic thoughts. Almost without meaning to, he puts himself in harm's way; he can't stop daydreaming of suicide, envisioning himself returning to the...