[/floatr]A new translation of a Natsuo Kirino novel has just appeared on the shelves in Britain. "Grotesque" was written in 2003 and, like her earlier crossover bestseller, "Out", it picked up literary awards in Japan. The publishers are bringing out the big guns for this one. "Out" narrowly failed to pick up the 2004 Edgar Allen Poe award but she is clearly deemed to be a hot property. The hardback edition is 480 pages long and weighs a ton which already puts her in a different market to other translated Japanese novelists (with the notable exception of Haruki Murakami). Knopf have announced that the author will be doing a press tour to support the book when it is released in the US in March.
This is from the synopsis on Amazon:
"Two prostitutes have been murdered in Tokyo. Yuriko had been working as a prostitute all her adult life, starting while still at school, where her stunning beauty compensated for what she lacked in intellect and commanded attention from older men. Kazue worked for a blue-chip company and had good career prospects, but was unpopular with colleagues and felt isolated. She chose to walk the streets at night where she hoped to get noticed. Twenty years previously, both women were educated at an elite school for young ladies, and both exhibited exceptional promise prior to their brutal , unnecessary deaths."
The character of Kazue is inspired, if that's the right word, by the case of Yasuko Watanabe, an employee of TEPCO who worked as a prostitute in Shibuya and was murdered in 1997. The Nepalese man accused was found innocent but later guilty of the crime (details in this old thread). Although "Grotesque" features a Chinese man arrested for the crimes, the book is not an attempt to recreate the circumstances of the real life case. Perhaps in later books, we can expect Natsuo Kirino to feature a bara bara satsujin like the recent examples.
