Ryū Murakami Boeken

An ambitious, epic dystopian novel - part political thriller and part satire.

A cream-of-the-crop selection of Murakami's brilliance and piercing wit. This collection shows sides of Ryu Murakami that even avid fans may not be expecting. The intriguing, somewhat disturbing stories that Topaz was based on are included here, as are three entertaining and revealing portraits of the artist as a young man back in the Transparent Blue period of the late sixties and early seventies. We hear tales told by four very different individuals living in eighties Tokyo, each with his or her own problems but all with a thing about a certain pro baseball player, and we meet a brokenhearted young woman who finds an unexpected moment of love in the nineties and a single mother who stumbles on a ray of hope in the hard times of the noughties. Mixed in there somewhere are three linked stories about desire and obsession, with the timeless, seductive rhythms of Cuban music in the background.

Every night, Kawashima Masayuki creeps from his bed and watches over his baby girl's crib while his wife sleeps. But this is no ordinary domestic scene. He has an ice pick in his hand, and a barely controllable desire to use it. Deciding to confront his demons, Kawashima sets into motion a chain of events seemingly to lead inexorably to murder ...

A side-splittingly funny coming-of-age novel set in the Japan of the sixties, Ryu Murakami's novel is an unusually funny and autobiographical book from an author known for his darkly violent and cynical side. Being young in the 1960s is the same in Japan as everywhere. This is a personal but profound insight into a much wider upheaval in society.

A darkly satirical tale of the generation and gender gaps in Japanese society.

From postmodern Renaissance man Ryu Murakami, master of the psychothriller and director of Tokyo Decadence, comes this hair-raising roller-coaster ride through the nefarious neon-lit world of Tokyo's sex industryIt's just before New Year, and Frank, an American tourist, has hired Kenji to take him on a guided tour of Tokyo's nightlife. But, Frank's behaviour is so odd that Kenji begins to entertain a horrible suspicion: his client may in fact have murderous desires. Although Kenji is far from innocent himself, he unwillingly descends with Frank into an inferno of evil, from which only his sixteen-year-old girlfriend, Jun, can possibly save him.

Coin Locker Babies is Ryu Murakami's cult cyperpunk novel. 'A cyber- Bildungsroman of playful breadth and uncertain depth' Publishers Weekly 'A fascinating peek into the weirdness of contemporary Japan' Oliver Stone

The shocking psycho-thriller behind the cult Japanese horror film

Almost Transparent Blue is a brutal tale of lost youth in a Japanese port town close to an American military base. Murakami's image-intensive narrative paints a portrait of a group of friends locked in a destructive cycle of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. The novel is all but plotless, but the raw and often violent prose takes us on a rollercoaster ride through reality and hallucination, highs and lows, in which the characters and their experiences come vividly to life. Trapped in passivity, they gain neither passion nor pleasure from their adventures. Yet out of the alienation, boredom and underlying rage and grief emerges a strangely quiet and almost equally shocking beauty. Ryu Murakami's first novel, Almost Transparent Blue won the coveted Akutagawa Literary Prize in 1976 and became an instant bestseller. Representing a sharp and conscious turning away from the introspective trend of postwar Japanese literature, it polarized critics and public alike and soon attracted international attention as an alternative view of modern Japan.

Der 2. und letzte der Teil des Japan-Nordkorea-Epos. Japan befindet sich in einer dystopischen Gegenwart. Amerika lässt seinen einstigen Verbündeten im Stich und Hunderttausende von Obdachlosen ziehen durch das von einer gigantischen Wirtschaftskrise gebeutelte Land. Rechtsgerichtete Politiker haben Aufwind. Nordkorea, das seine Beziehungen zu den USA inzwischen verbessert hat, beschließt, die Schwäche des verhassten Nachbarn auszunutzen, und plant eine heimtückische Invasion. Getarnt als aus Nordkorea geflüchtete Dissidenten besetzt eine Einheit aus neun Elite-Soldaten das Baseball-Stadion der japanischen Hafenstadt Fukuoka und nimmt 30.000 Zuschauer als Geiseln. Im Zuge der Geheimoperation »In Liebe, Dein Vaterland« sollen weitere 120.000 Soldaten folgen und den Süden Japans in eine Provinz Nordkoreas verwandeln. Während die japanische Regierung hysterisch sinnlose Maßnahmen ergreift, nimmt in Fukuoka ein absurder Albtraum seinen Lauf. Die Einzigen, die den Mut haben, den Invasoren entgegenzutreten, ist eine Gruppe junger ausgestoßener Soziopathen, die schon lange auf eine Gelegenheit warten, ihre gewalttätigen Fantasien umzusetzen: Fukuoka darf nicht kampflos fallen. Ein epischer Politthriller von beklemmender Aktualität, wie nur Altmeister Ryū Murakami ihn schreiben kann.