The latest addition to Dalkey Archive’s Japanese Literature Series is a suspenseful and phantasmagorical work by Matsuura (The Jest of Things). The curtain rises on an already ominous setting with Otsuki, a recovered drug addict and college dropout who lives a parasitic life in Tokyo and engages “in a kind of fantasy to see how far [he] could let [him]self go, how deep a hole [he] could wallow in, before reaching nothing.” A coincidental encounter on the street with Sugimoto, a former colleague who “oozed madness,” brings him back in tune to his troubled past, leading him to a job with shady Koyama, a master calligrapher. Otsuki is shown a screening of an unfinished, explicit pornographic film starring the master’s granddaughter, spliced with images of insects and is relegated the task of filming the rest. His involvement results in an extended labyrinthian nightmare introducing double moons, exposing the seedy underbelly of the criminal underworld, characters who are not what they seem, and delving into a metaphysical and philosophical conundrum on the nature of time. Fans of Murakami will find this an esoteric and experimental read that will leave them pondering the book’s unanswered questions long after reading. (May)
Read the Publisher’s Weekly review here and the Complete Review’s article here
