Reviews
Devils in Daylight by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki is a horror novella recently translated by Keith Vincent. He further explains the pun of the original Japanese title (白昼鬼語) and how he did his best to render it in English. New media inspires re-examination of older media. Keeping in mind that this is a 1918 novel, the new media here is cinema. It had a late introduction to Japan but once it did, it took off.
It really is impossible to put down this book once you've started as there is such a powerful, almost poetic, flow to the narration. Inspired by Poe's The Gold Bug, Devils in Daylight adopts Poe's magical quality and brings in an unimaginable depth to what starts off as a deceptively simple story. I also could not stop thinking of Poe's Purloined Letter while reading this as Tanizaki also plays with the concept of 'seeing without realizing that one is being seen by another' and creates a story that can actually be a fresh breath for the immense literature that developed around The Purloined Letter.
