Items related to Boy in the Earth
Fuminori Nakamura's Akutagawa Prize-winner plunges us into the depths of a young man's winding, troubled psyche.
An unnamed taxi driver in Tokyo has experienced a rupture from his everyday life. He cannot stop daydreaming of suicide, envisioning himself returning to the earth in what soon become terrifying blackout episodes. His live-in girlfriend, Sayuko, is in a similarly bad phase, surrendering to alcoholism to escape the memory of her miscarriage. He meets with the director of the orphanage where he once lived, and must confront awful memories of his past and an abusive family before determining what to do next.
Praise for The Gun:
"The author does more in less than 200 pages than most authors could pull off in 600... stripped down, focused, intense, and worth every second you spend reading." - Bookgasm
"His grasp of the seamy underbelly of the city is why Nakamura is one of the most award-winning young guns of Japanese hardboiled detective writing." - Daily Beast
An unnamed taxi driver in Tokyo has experienced a rupture from his everyday life. He cannot stop daydreaming of suicide, envisioning himself returning to the earth in what soon become terrifying blackout episodes. His live-in girlfriend, Sayuko, is in a similarly bad phase, surrendering to alcoholism to escape the memory of her miscarriage. He meets with the director of the orphanage where he once lived, and must confront awful memories of his past and an abusive family before determining what to do next.
Praise for The Gun:
"The author does more in less than 200 pages than most authors could pull off in 600... stripped down, focused, intense, and worth every second you spend reading." - Bookgasm
"His grasp of the seamy underbelly of the city is why Nakamura is one of the most award-winning young guns of Japanese hardboiled detective writing." - Daily Beast
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review:
Praise for The Boy in the Earth "Absorbing . . . Just what abuse the narrator suffered as a youth is one of the puzzles to be solved (in horrific detail) by The Boy in the Earth. Another mystery is whether he will find a nonfatal way to break out of his Kafkaesque memory palace. By the book's end, the reader comes to care about the second answer as much as the first."
--Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal "Although many orders of magnitude darker, Nakamura may be the spiritual heir to Kenzaburō Ōe. This is existential literature at its compelling and nauseating best... His work isn't merely noir as titillation; it's the hideous truth below the surface, and he is one of the most vital writers at work today in Japan."
--The Japan Times "[Nakamura] has demonstrated time and again, and does so again here, that he is one of the best crime novelist working today."
--PANK Magazine "Nakamura is known for the dark nihilism of his fiction, but in this contemplation of whether even the most damaged of lives can be saved, there is a final ray of hope."
--Booklist "Told in an intimate first-person narrative, Nakamura's novel, translated for the first time into English, considers the long-term repercussions of abuse and a life on the fringe of society...this well-written sparse character study in psychological obsession will appeal to readers who like their fiction dark."
--Library Journal "The Boy in the Earth offers readers a darkly philosophic musing on violence, history, purpose and what it means to be alive, told in elegant prose."
--Shelf Awareness "The Zen master, the true Buddha of Noir, is the dark genius that is Fuminori Nakamura."
--This is Horror
"A thriller in the same elevated sense of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment or Camus' The Stranger."
--Reviewing the Evidence "Haunting . . . The Boy in the Earth plumbs some seriously dark territory."
--Reading Matters Praise for Fuminori Nakamura "Crime fiction that pushes past the bounds of genre, occupying its own nightmare realm . . . Guilt or innocence is not the issue; we are corrupted, complicit, just by living in society. The ties that bind, in other words, are rules beyond our making, rules that distance us not only from each other but also from ourselves."
--Los Angeles Times "A suspenseful study of obsession . . . Nakamura's noir story, translated by Allison Markin Powell, is about liberation . . . Love, even illicit love, has a way of bringing out the best or the worst in a person."
--The New York Times "Few protagonists in modern crime fiction are as alienated as those in the challenging, violent, grotesque tales of Japanese author Fuminori Nakamura . . . Yurika's struggle to escape her vexed fate elevates this shocker well above the lurid."
--The Wall Street Journal "This slim, icy, outstanding thriller, reminiscent of Muriel Spark and Patricia Highsmith, should establish Fuminori Nakamura as one of the most interesting Japanese crime novelists at work today."
--USA Today
About the Author:
--Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal "Although many orders of magnitude darker, Nakamura may be the spiritual heir to Kenzaburō Ōe. This is existential literature at its compelling and nauseating best... His work isn't merely noir as titillation; it's the hideous truth below the surface, and he is one of the most vital writers at work today in Japan."
--The Japan Times "[Nakamura] has demonstrated time and again, and does so again here, that he is one of the best crime novelist working today."
--PANK Magazine "Nakamura is known for the dark nihilism of his fiction, but in this contemplation of whether even the most damaged of lives can be saved, there is a final ray of hope."
--Booklist "Told in an intimate first-person narrative, Nakamura's novel, translated for the first time into English, considers the long-term repercussions of abuse and a life on the fringe of society...this well-written sparse character study in psychological obsession will appeal to readers who like their fiction dark."
--Library Journal "The Boy in the Earth offers readers a darkly philosophic musing on violence, history, purpose and what it means to be alive, told in elegant prose."
--Shelf Awareness "The Zen master, the true Buddha of Noir, is the dark genius that is Fuminori Nakamura."
--This is Horror
"A thriller in the same elevated sense of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment or Camus' The Stranger."
--Reviewing the Evidence "Haunting . . . The Boy in the Earth plumbs some seriously dark territory."
--Reading Matters Praise for Fuminori Nakamura "Crime fiction that pushes past the bounds of genre, occupying its own nightmare realm . . . Guilt or innocence is not the issue; we are corrupted, complicit, just by living in society. The ties that bind, in other words, are rules beyond our making, rules that distance us not only from each other but also from ourselves."
--Los Angeles Times "A suspenseful study of obsession . . . Nakamura's noir story, translated by Allison Markin Powell, is about liberation . . . Love, even illicit love, has a way of bringing out the best or the worst in a person."
--The New York Times "Few protagonists in modern crime fiction are as alienated as those in the challenging, violent, grotesque tales of Japanese author Fuminori Nakamura . . . Yurika's struggle to escape her vexed fate elevates this shocker well above the lurid."
--The Wall Street Journal "This slim, icy, outstanding thriller, reminiscent of Muriel Spark and Patricia Highsmith, should establish Fuminori Nakamura as one of the most interesting Japanese crime novelists at work today."
--USA Today
Fuminori Nakamura was born in 1977 and graduated from Fukushima University in 2000. He has won numerous prizes for his writing, including the e Prize, Japan's largest literary award; the David L. Goodis Award for Noir Fiction; and the prestigious Akutagawa Prize. The Thief, his first novel to be translated into English, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His other works include The Kingdom, Evil and the Mask, The Gun, and Last Winter, We Parted.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherSoho Press
- Publication date2017
- ISBN 10 1616955945
- ISBN 13 9781616955946
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages160
- Rating
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