The Boy In The Earth
(Sprache: Englisch)
A darkly melancholic tale that combines Scorsese s Taxi Driver and Camus s The Fall Nakamura s Akutagawa Prize-winning novel is here translated into English for the first time and is another high-water mark in this important writer s career.
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A darkly melancholic tale that combines Scorsese s Taxi Driver and Camus s The Fall Nakamura s Akutagawa Prize-winning novel is here translated into English for the first time and is another high-water mark in this important writer s career. As an unnamed Tokyo taxi driver works a night shift, picking up fares that offer him glimpses into the lives of ordinary people, he can t escape his own nihilistic thoughts. Almost without meaning to, he puts himself in harm s way; he can t stop daydreaming of suicide, envisioning himself returning to the earth in obsessive fantasies that soon become terrifying blackout episodes. The truth is, his long-estranged father has tried to reach out to him, triggering a cascade of traumatic memories. As the cab driver wrestles with the truth about his past and the history of violence in his childhood, he must also confront his present, which is no less complicated or grim.
A precursor to Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist The Thief, The Boy in the Earth is a closely told character study that poses a difficult question: Are some lives so damaged they are beyond redemption? Is every child worth trying to save? A poignant and thought-provoking tour de force by one of Japan s leading literary voices.
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1In the flood of headlights surrounding me, I saw that there was no escape. The motorcycles were just gunning their engines and watching me as I stood there, helpless to do anything. But I doubted that this standoff would go on for much longer. I figured soon these guys would get off their bikes and beat me with the iron pipes they were holding until they were satisfied.
Fear had made my legs go unpleasantly weak, but for some time now, I had been distracted by the thought that I must have been expecting all of this to happen. Until just a little while ago, I had been aimlessly wandering around the late night streets. With no destination, smoking as I walked, it was as if I had been searching for the city s darkest places, bidden by the poorly lit streets. I had encountered these guys in front of a vending machine beside a park. They had stopped their bikes and were still sitting astride them, drinking juice, munching away and smoking cigarettes like they were drunk. At first, they hadn t paid attention to me. They had been cheerfully howling with laughter that is, until I threw my cigarette butt toward them.
I did what I did on purpose with clear intention. It was not unconscious, nor was it for no reason at all I was completely cognizant and aware of my actions. It was something I had to do, show these dregs of society what I thought of them, hanging out in a place like this. Those were my thoughts at the time. But now, awash in the light of their motorcycles, I could not fathom why I had felt that way.
There was no question, though, that here I found myself in a predicament. I had done something stupid without thinking of the consequences that was all there was to it but this kind of thing happened to me with some regularity. Just the day before yesterday, a car was making a right-hand turn against the light and, for no reason other than to demonstrate how dangerous it
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was, instead of trying to avoid it I deliberately stopped in the middle the crosswalk, right in front of the car so that the driver had no choice but to slam on the brakes. What both these instances had in common was that the direct result of my own actions put me in danger it was my own behavior that thrust me into unfavorable conditions.
Hey, what do you think you re doing? A guy with a shaved head who was most likely the leader got off his bike, his eyes unfocused. The others were still revving their engines, like in a kind of ritual. When the leader raised the iron pipe, his expression was hollow, as if he had no interest in what might happen to my body when he brought the pipe down. The blow landed on my side with an unexpectedly intense pain that knocked the wind out of me, and a moment later an unbearable jolt of searing heat coursed through my entire body. I found it difficult to breathe I barely managed to inhale through my constricted throat. A frail, inside-out voice leaked from my lips. The shivers of pain and fear that wracked my body would not stop. I tried to stand up, but my ankle and knee joints were so stiff they didn t seem to work.
Your money, all of it. And then, right . . . t-ten more of those and we ll let you go! he said and, as if waiting to see what I would do, he lit a cigarette. All I had on me at the time were a few coins, all of them probably didn t even add up to a thousand yen. Still, I shook my head. I tried to speak, but my face felt like it was on fire, and the next thing I knew, I was lying facedown on the ground. It felt cool against my cheeks, and the blood flowing from my gums had leaked out of my mouth in a trickle. I thought they might have lost interest by now, but the situation remained unchanged. I passed out, but just briefly there was
Hey, what do you think you re doing? A guy with a shaved head who was most likely the leader got off his bike, his eyes unfocused. The others were still revving their engines, like in a kind of ritual. When the leader raised the iron pipe, his expression was hollow, as if he had no interest in what might happen to my body when he brought the pipe down. The blow landed on my side with an unexpectedly intense pain that knocked the wind out of me, and a moment later an unbearable jolt of searing heat coursed through my entire body. I found it difficult to breathe I barely managed to inhale through my constricted throat. A frail, inside-out voice leaked from my lips. The shivers of pain and fear that wracked my body would not stop. I tried to stand up, but my ankle and knee joints were so stiff they didn t seem to work.
Your money, all of it. And then, right . . . t-ten more of those and we ll let you go! he said and, as if waiting to see what I would do, he lit a cigarette. All I had on me at the time were a few coins, all of them probably didn t even add up to a thousand yen. Still, I shook my head. I tried to speak, but my face felt like it was on fire, and the next thing I knew, I was lying facedown on the ground. It felt cool against my cheeks, and the blood flowing from my gums had leaked out of my mouth in a trickle. I thought they might have lost interest by now, but the situation remained unchanged. I passed out, but just briefly there was
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Autoren-Porträt von Fuminori Nakamura
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 novels include The Gun, The Kingdom, Evil and the Mask, and Last Winter, We Parted.
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Fuminori Nakamura
- 2018, 192 Seiten, Masse: 12,7 x 19 cm, Kartoniert (TB), Englisch
- Übersetzer: Allison Markin Powell
- Verlag: Soho Crime
- ISBN-10: 1616958952
- ISBN-13: 9781616958954
- Erscheinungsdatum: 22.06.2018
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
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 Kenzabur e. 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."
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Reading Matters
Praise for Fuminori Nakamura
Japan Objects' Best Japanese Authors of All Time
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
Praise for Fuminori Nakamura
Japan Objects' Best Japanese Authors of All Time
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
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