About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherKodansha America, Incorporated

ISBN-104770029578

ISBN-139784770029577

eBay Product ID (ePID)2892458

Product Key Features

Book TitleIn the Miso Soup

Number of Pages1 Pages

LanguageEnglish

TopicThrillers / Suspense, Crime, Literary

Publication Year2003

IllustratorYes

GenreFiction

AuthorRalph F. Mccarthy, Ryu Murakami

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height0.8 in

Item Weight17.6 Oz

Item Length6.3 in

Item Width9 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

Dewey Edition22

Reviews"Murakami has won some nice press for his unflinching look at violence and the underbelly of modern Japan; there's no doubt that it's deserved. His latest oozes darkness and ambiguity and reads like a cross-Pacific bullet train." -Entertainment Weekly" . . .It is a testament to the strengths of Ryu Murakami's novel that it is ultimately defined not by its explicit depictions of violence and sex but instead by its misfit characters. In this skillful translation by Ralph McCarthy, Kenji is an appealing narrator, observant without being judgmental and nervous without being melodramatic; even the intensely creepy Frank is not entirely unsympathetic . . . Murakami deftly drops into this slim book both fascinating sociological details about the sex industry and often moving philosophical arguments about the forces that shape individual and national identity." -New York Times Book Review"In this stark story by the iconoclastic Japanese filmmaker and novelist, originally published in Japan in 1997, a psychotic American sex tourist hires a young man top shepherd him through Tokyo's seedier side. Surrounded by the brute sexual violence and urban intrigue, the unlikely pair inhabits an eerie world between Asian noir and Pulp Fiction." -Details magazine"In the Miso Soup is by turns comic and shocking-and then, all at once, both-but it is always memorable, and offers a window onto a world few Americans will ever see." -Pages magazine"Murakami exposes the myth behind the exoticism of sex tourism...the 'Great Omiai Pub Massacre' reads like pure Miike [the film Audition] mania . . .perhaps will play well on the big screen one day." -VLS, The Village Voice"Ryu Murakami's In the Miso Soup, just released in English translation, presents a postmodern movement in a doomed tango between cultures that simultaneously attract and repel each other . . . Since his debut novel Almost Transparent Blue, brimming with sex and drugs near a US military base, won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1976, Murakami has balanced on the cutting edge of Japanese popular culture. His resume includes rock drumming, political and economic commentary and a stint as a talk-show host, but it is his novels and cult films that shock audiences." -Asia Times Online (www.atimes.com)"A blistering portrait of contemporary Japan, its nihilism and decadence wrapped up within one of the most savage thrillers since The Silence of the Lambs. Shocking but gripping." -Kirkus Reviews"A wicked meditation on the worst traits of American and Japanese society, this is a creepy culture clash indeed." -Booklist, "Murakami has won some nice press for his unflinching look at violence and the underbelly of modern Japan; there's no doubt that it's deserved. His latest oozes darkness and ambiguity and reads like a cross-Pacific bullet train." -Entertainment Weekly " . . .It is a testament to the strengths of Ryu Murakami's novel that it is ultimately defined not by its explicit depictions of violence and sex but instead by its misfit characters. In this skillful translation by Ralph McCarthy, Kenji is an appealing narrator, observant without being judgmental and nervous without being melodramatic; even the intensely creepy Frank is not entirely unsympathetic . . . Murakami deftly drops into this slim book both fascinating sociological details about the sex industry and often moving philosophical arguments about the forces that shape individual and national identity." -New York Times Book Review "In this stark story by the iconoclastic Japanese filmmaker and novelist, originally published in Japan in 1997, a psychotic American sex tourist hires a young man top shepherd him through Tokyo's seedier side. Surrounded by the brute sexual violence and urban intrigue, the unlikely pair inhabits an eerie world between Asian noir and Pulp Fiction." -Details magazine "In the Miso Soup is by turns comic and shocking-and then, all at once, both-but it is always memorable, and offers a window onto a world few Americans will ever see." -Pages magazine "Murakami exposes the myth behind the exoticism of sex tourism...the 'Great Omiai Pub Massacre' reads like pure Miike [the film Audition] mania . . .perhaps will play well on the big screen one day." -VLS, The Village Voice "Ryu Murakami's In the Miso Soup, just released in English translation, presents a postmodern movement in a doomed tango between cultures that simultaneously attract and repel each other . . . Since his debut novel Almost Transparent Blue, brimming with sex and drugs near a US military base, won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1976, Murakami has balanced on the cutting edge of Japanese popular culture. His resume includes rock drumming, political and economic commentary and a stint as a talk-show host, but it is his novels and cult films that shock audiences." -Asia Times Online (www.atimes.com) "A blistering portrait of contemporary Japan, its nihilism and decadence wrapped up within one of the most savage thrillers since The Silence of the Lambs. Shocking but gripping." -Kirkus Reviews "A wicked meditation on the worst traits of American and Japanese society, this is a creepy culture clash indeed." -Booklist

Number of Volumes1 vol.

Dewey Decimal895.6/35

SynopsisTokyo tour guide Kenji takes on Frank--a great white whale of an American tourist--and soon begins to suspect that he might be the serial killer that is terrorizing the city. Full of dark humor and suspense, this book takes readers on a wild ride through the underbelly of Tokyo compliments of the legendary Ryu Murakami., This book tells the story of a nightlife guide and his "great white whale" American customer. It is a wild ride through the underbelly of Tokyo that only Ryu Murakami can provide., It is just before New Year's. Frank, an overweight American tourist, has hired Kenji to take him on a guided tour of Tokyo's sleazy nightlife on three successive evenings. But Frank's behavior is so strange that Kenji begins to entertain a horrible suspicion: that his new client is in fact the serial killer currently terrorizing the city. It isn't until the second night, however, in a scene that will shock you and make you laugh and make you hate yourself for laughing, that Kenji learns exactly how much he has to fear and how irrevocably his encounter with this great white whale of an American will change his life. Kenji's intimate knowledge of Tokyo's sex industry, his thoughtful observations and wisecracks about the emptiness and hypocrisy of contemporary Japan, and his insights into the shockingly widespread phenomena of "compensated dating" and "selling it" among Japanese schoolgirls, give us plenty to think about on every page. Kenji is our likable, if far from innocent, guide to the inferno of violence and evil into which he unwillingly descends-and from which only Jun, his sixteen-year-old girlfriend, can possibly save him...

LC Classification NumberPL833.I7