Fuminori Nakamura

An anonymous Tokyo pickpocket finds his past catching up with him when his first partner reappears in his life and enlists him for a seemingly uncomplicated heist involving a prominent politician who is subsequently found dead.

The Thief

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 a puzzle-box of a narrative that delves relentlessly into the darkest corners of human consciousness, that interrogates the unspeakable thoughts that all humans share and that only monsters act on.

My Annihilation

Searching for a woman who suddenly vanished from his life, Narazaki comes upon a religious group centered on an odd old man - and upon their enemies, a cult preaching sexual liberation

Cult X

A writer interviewing a photographer imprisoned for the murder of two women, both burned alive, begins to have doubts about his subject's guilt. By the author of The Thief. $40,000 ad/promo.

Last Winter We Parted

On a night-time 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. But Nishikawa's personal entanglements are becoming unexpectedly complicated: he finds himself romantically involved with two women, while his biological father, whom he's never met, lies dying in a hospital. Through it all, he can't stop thinking about the gun - and the four bullets preloaded in its chamber.

The Gun

Informed by his elderly, enigmatic father that he was created to cause misery in an uncontrollable world, Fuminori is educated to invoke as much destruction and unhappiness as possible and lives a hedonist life without repercussions before starting to question his father's mandates. By the award-winning author of The Thief.

Evil and the Mask

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.

The Boy in the Earth

Zen-Noir master Nakamura returns to the Tokyo of The Thief, where a young grifter named Yurika finds herself in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with the shadowy crime lord Kizaki. 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. She operates alone and lives a private, solitary life, doing her best to lock away painful memories. But when a figure from Yurika’s past resurfaces, she realizes there is someone out there who knows all her secrets: her losses, her motivations, her every move. There are whispers of a crime lord named Kizaki—“a monster,” she is told—and Yurika finds herself trapped in a game of cat and mouse. Is she wily enough to escape one of the most sadistic men in Tokyo? From the Hardcover edition.

The Kingdom

Sam Bett

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 a puzzle-box of a narrative that delves relentlessly into the darkest corners of human consciousness, that interrogates the unspeakable thoughts that all humans share and that only monsters act on.

In einer Regennacht findet ein junger Mann in den Straßen von Tokio eine Leiche – und neben ihr einen Revolver. Nishikawa nimmt die Waffe an sich und entwickelt schon nach kurzer Zeit eine unheimliche Obsession. All seine Gedanken, sein ganzes Leben kreisen um das perfekte kleine Wunderwerk. Und um die vier Kugeln, die sich noch immer in der Trommel befinden. Irgendwann ist es nicht mehr genug, die Waffe zu besitzen. Er muss sie abfeuern.

Der Revolver

Die Maske

Two detectives narrate the aftermath of the murder of a bondage teacher and provide an intimate look into the darkest corners of the human mind in this chilling new mystery from the master of Japanese literary noir. 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, Togashi’s colleague Hayama is morally upright to a fault, with a stalwart commitment to the truth. A Sherlock Holmesian detective with nearly superhuman powers of deduction, Hayama notices a dangerous measure of darkness within Togashi and embarks on his own parallel investigation, which soon spirals out of control. Unflinching in its flayed-raw treatment of identity, violence, sexuality, power, the occult, and the divine, Fuminori Nakamura’s explosive, complex new mystery is both viscerally painful and unexpectedly hopeful—plus, intriguingly pulpy. As is the case with all Nakamura’s work, The Rope Artist has a twisted, tangled plot, and functions as a profoundly philosophical treatise on the most tantalizing, most dangerous elements of the human psyche.

The Rope Artist

นักล้วง

ฤดูหนาวเมื่อเราพราก

L'hiver dernier, je me suis séparé de toi

Die mächtige japanische Kuki-Familie folgt einer menschenverachtenden Tradition: Der jeweils jüngste Sohn wird dazu erzogen, das Böse über die Menschheit zu bringen. Und so erhält Fumihiro eine Ausbildung, deren Ziel Zerstörung und Unglück ist, so viel ein einzelner Mensch nur vermag. Doch er hat andere Pläne: Fumihiro liebt das Waisenmädchen Kaori und will sie beschützen – und damit wird sein eigener Vater zu seinem schlimmsten Feind.

Zen-Noir master Nakamura returns to the Tokyo of The Thief, where a young grifter named Yurika finds herself in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with the shadowy crime lord Kizaki. 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. She operates alone and lives a private, solitary life, doing her best to lock away painful memories. But when a figure from Yurika’s past resurfaces, she realizes there is someone out there who knows all her secrets: her losses, her motivations, her every move. There are whispers of a crime lord named Kizaki—“a monster,” she is told—and Yurika finds herself trapped in a game of cat and mouse. Is she wily enough to escape one of the most sadistic men in Tokyo?

Instantly reminiscent of the work of Osamu Dazai and Patricia Highsmith, Fuminori Nakamura’s latest novel is a dark and twisting house of mirrors that philosophically explores the violence of aesthetics and the horrors of identity. A young writer arrives at a prison to interview a convict. The writer has been commissioned to write a full account of the case, from the bizarre and grisly details of the crime to the nature of the man behind it. The suspect, a world-renowned photographer named Kiharazaka, has a deeply unsettling portfolio—lurking beneath the surface of each photograph is an acutely obsessive fascination with his subject. He stands accused of murdering two women—both burned alive—and will likely face the death penalty. But something isn’t quite right. As the young writer probes further, his doubts about this man as a killer intensify, and he struggles to maintain his sense of reason and justice. Is Kiharazaka truly guilty, or will he die to protect someone else? Evoking Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood and Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s “Hell Screen,” Last Winter, We Parted is a twisted tale that asks a deceptively sinister question: Is it possible to truly capture the essence of another human being?

中村航

村田沙耶香

羽田圭介

西加奈子

角田光代

朝井リョウ

窪美澄

ＢＳジャパン

若林正恭

長嶋有

加藤千恵

平野啓一郎

山崎ナオコーラ

佐藤友哉

島本理生

藤沢周

海猫沢めろん

白岩玄

柴崎友香

尾崎世界観

光浦靖子

佐久間宣行

小説家って面白い！ 無類の本好き芸人・オードリー若林正恭と、２０人の作家たちが“自分のルール”を語りつくす。 大人気番組、ついに書籍化！ 西加奈子／朝井リョウ／長嶋有／加藤千恵／村田沙耶香／平野啓一郎／山崎ナオコーラ／佐藤友哉／島本理生／藤沢周／羽田圭介／海猫沢めろん／白岩玄／中村航／中村文則／窪美澄／柴崎友香／角田光代／尾崎世界観／光浦靖子

Fuminori Nakamura

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