Evil and the Mask
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
The second book by prize-winning Japanese novelist Fuminori Nakamura to be available in English translation, a follow-up to 2012's critically acclaimed The Thief─another fantastically creepy, electric literary thriller that explores the limits of human depravity─and the powerful human instinct to resist evil.
When Fumihiro Kuki is eleven years old, his elderly, enigmatic father calls him into his study for a meeting. "I created you to be a cancer on the world," his father tells him. It is a tradition in their wealthy family: a patriarch, when reaching the end of his life, will beget one last child to cause misery in a world that cannot be controlled or saved. From this point on, Fumihiro will be specially educated to learn to create as much destruction and unhappiness in the world around him as a single person can. Between his education in hedonism and his family's resources, Fumihiro's life is one without repercussions. Every door is open to him, for he need obey no laws and may live out any fantasy he might have, no matter how many people are hurt in the process. But as his education progresses, Fumihiro begins to question his father's mandate, and starts to resist.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At the outset of this bleak, melancholy stand-alone from Nakamura (The Thief), 11-year-old Fumihiro Kuki learns from his father, Shozo, that he's next in the family dynasty to become "a personification of evil." Fumihiro is to become not just a mere assassin but a true monster: someone able to foment civil war in a small country, sell arms to both sides, and then rebuild the nation's infrastructure using the Kuki family's strong military-industrial ties. Shozo threatens to debauch Kaori, Fumihiro's beloved adopted sister, if he doesn't cooperate. Fumihiro's subsequent obsession with and desire to protect Kaori, his ideal of goodness and purity, forms the crux of this novel that deals with basic questions of good and evil, guilt and remorse. Cryptic detectives, smoky nightclubs, and murky streets in Japanese suburbs add to the noir sensibility. At times bizarre, at times hallucinatory, the story is always provocative.
