Kawamata Chiaki,Thomas Lamarre,Kazuko Y. Behrens
Japan, 1980s: A special police squad is tracking down one of the â€œafflictedâ€ to recover the â€œstuff.â€ Although the operation seems like a drug bust, the â€œstuffâ€ is actually some kind of text. ,Death Sentences,â€”a work of science fiction that shares its conceit with the major motion picture ,The Ring,â€”tells the story of a mysterious surrealist poem, penned in the 1940s, which, through low-tech circulation across time, kills its readers, including Arshile Gorky and Antonin Artaud, before sparking a wave of suicides after its publication in 1980s Japan. Mixing elements of Japanese hard-boiled detective story, horror, and science fiction, the novel ranges across time and space, from the Left Bank of Paris to the planet Mars.,Paris, 1948: AndrÃ© Breton anxiously awaits a young poet, Who May. He recalls their earlier encounter in New York City and the mysterious effects of reading Who Mayâ€™s poem â€œOther World.â€ Upon meeting, Who May gives Breton another poem, â€œMirror,â€ an even more unsettling work. Breton shares it with his fellow surrealists. Before Breton can discuss the poem with him, Who May vanishes. Who May contacts Breton about a third poem, â€œThe Gold of Time,â€ and then slips into a coma and dies (or enters another dimension). Copies of the poem are mailed to all of Who Mayâ€™s friendsâ€”Breton, Gorky, Paul Ã‰luard, Marcel Duchamp, and other famous surrealists and dadaists. Thus begins the â€œmagic poem plague.â€,Death Sentences, is the first novel by the popular and critically acclaimed science fiction author Kawamata Chiaki to be published in English. Released in Japan in 1984 as ,Genshi-gari ,(Hunting the magic poems), ,Death Sentences, was a best seller and won the Japan Science Fiction Grand Prize. With echoes of such classic sci-fi works as George Orwellâ€™s ,1984,, Ray Bradburyâ€™s, Fahrenheit 451,, William Gibsonâ€™s ,Neuromancer,, and Philip K. Dickâ€™s ,Martian Time-Slip, Death Sentences, is a fascinating mind-bender with a style all its own.
Science Fiction,Fiction,Asian Literature,Japanese Literature,Cultural,Japan,Fantasy,Horror,Literature,Historical,Historical Fiction,Science Fiction Fantasy,Novels
Death Sentences