DISCOVER FUMINORI NAKAMURA

Turn this page, and you may forfeit your entire life.

A young man finds a loaded pistol, a child befriends a lonely pickpocket, a writer interviews a sadistic serial killer, a man considers his monstrous family legacy, a detective struggles to resist a dark impulse.

In his twenty years as an author, author Fuminori Nakamura has carved a space uniquely his own in crime fiction with his lean prose, intricate plotting, and—most distinctly—his ever-searching, never easy characters. Of his protagonists, TheWallStreet Journal says few “in modern crime fiction are as alienated as those in the challenging, violent, grotesque tales of Japanese author Fuminori Nakamura.”

In these novels, readers will find echoes of Camus, Sartre, and Dostoevsky—but also Goodis, Thompson, and Highsmith. Nakamura’s bleak vision is indebted equally to nihilism and noir. Mysteries abound, answers are sought—but what is often found by his lonely subjects as they walk their unlit path is an even deeper darkness.

Soho Crime is proud to present the thrilling, profound, deeply affecting novels of Fuminori Nakamura.

Fuminori Nakamura was born in 1977 and graduated from Fukushima University in 2000. He has won numerous prizes for his writing, including Japan’s prestigious Oe Prize; the David L. Goodis Award for Noir Fiction; and the 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 Cult X, The Gun, TheKingdom, Evil and the Mask, TheBoyinthe Earth, My Annihilation, and Last Winter, We Parted.

Translated by Sam Bett

On Sale: May 2, 2023

Hardcover• 288 Pages

9781641293259

Trade Paperback

On Sale: April 2024

9781641295697

Two detectives narrate the aftermath of the murder of a bondage teacher and provide an intimate look into the darkest corners of the human mind in this chilling new mystery from the master of Japanese literary noir.

Two detectives. Two identical women. One dead body—rapidly becoming two, then three, then four. All knotted up in Japan’s underground BDSM scene and kinbaku, a form of rope bondage which bears a complex cultural history of spirituality, torture, cleansing, and sacrifice. As Togashi, a junior member of the police force, investigates the murder of a kinbaku instructor, he finds himself unable to resist his own private transgressive desires. In contrast, Togashi’s colleague Hayama is morally upright to a fault. A Sherlock Holmesian detective with nearly superhuman powers of deduction, Hayama notices a dangerous measure of darkness within Togashi and embarks on his own parallel investigation, which soon spirals out of control.

Unflinching in its flayed-raw treatment of identity, violence, sexuality, power, the occult, and the divine, Fuminori Nakamura’s explosive, complex new mystery is both viscerally painful and unexpectedly hopeful.

The Thief

A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist • Winner of Japan’s Prestigious Oe Prize

A literary crime masterpiece that follows a Japanese pickpocket lost to the machinations of fate. Bleak and oozing existential dread, TheThief is simply unforgettable, and is now reissued in a brand new deluxe edition with an introduction by Duane Swierczynski, an afterword by the author, and discussion questions.

“I was deeply impressed with The Thief. It is fresh. It is sure to enjoy a great deal of attention.” —Kenzaburo Oe, Nobel Prize-winning author of A Personal Matter

The Thief (Deluxe Edition) • Translated by Satoko Izumo and Stephen Coates; Introduction by Duane Swierczynski On Sale Now • Trade Paperback • 240 Pages • 9781641293211

My Annihilation

An NPR Best Book of the Year

What transforms a person into a killer? Can it be something as small as a suggestion?

This devious puzzle box narrative in the form of a killer’s confessional diary interrogates the unspeakable thoughts all humans share that can be monstrous when brought to life, and implicates its reader in a heinous crime.

“Surgical memory erasure, subliminal messaging, sexual blackmail and suicide all feature in this bravura work, which evokes the feel of such diverse writers as Calvino, Highsmith, Kafka and Dick.”—The Wall Street Journal

MyAnnihilation • Translated by Sam Bett On Sale Now • Trade Paperback • 264 Pages •9781641294072

Cult X

Toru Narazaki has tracked his lost girlfriend, Ryoko, as far as the former Tokyo compound of a fringe religious sect led by a charismatic guru. Narazaki plunges into the secretive world of the cult, ready to expose himself to any of the guru’s brainwashing tactics if it means he can learn the truth about Ryoko. But the cult isn’t what he expected, and he has no idea of the bubbling violence he is stepping into.

“Inspired by Aum Shinrikyo, the group responsible for the 1995 sarin attack in the Tokyo subway . . . Nakamura weaves in themes of personal commitment, politics, religion and much more.”

The Boy In The Earth

A darkly melancholic tale that combines Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and Camus’s The Fall set in Tokyo about a cab driver wrestling with the truth about his past and the violence of his childhood. Nakamura’s Akutagawa Prize-winning novel is a closely told character study that poses a difficult question: Are some lives so damaged they are beyond redemption?

“Nakamura may be the spiritual heir to Kenzaburo Oe. This is existential literature at its compelling and nauseating best . . . One of the most vital writers at work today in Japan.”

—The Japan Times

The Gun

A Wall Street Journal Best Mystery of the Year • An ABA IndieNext Selection • A BookRiot “100 Must-Read Noir Novels” Selection

A Tokyo college student’s discovery of a handgun next to a corpse awakens something dark inside him. As he spirals into obsession, his focus is consumed by one idea: that possessing the gun is no longer enough—he must fire it.

“The Gun offers an addictive—one might even say compulsive—night’s worth of chillingly unnerving entertainment.” The Richmond TImes Dispatch

The Gun • Translated by Allison Markin Powell On Sale Now • Trade Paperback • 224 Pages • 9781616957681

Evil And The Mask

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. So begins this fantastically creepy, electric literary thriller that explores the limits of human depravity and the powerful human instinct to resist evil.

“Evil and the Mask is a brilliant novel from one of Japan’s most current authors . . . If you love Patricia Highsmith, you’ll love Nakamura.”—The Globe and Mail

Evil and the Mask • Translated by Satoko Izumo and Stephen Coates On Sale Now • Trade Paperback • 384 Pages • 9781616953706

LAST WINTER, WE PARTED

A BookRiot 100 Must-Read Novels of Noir

A young writer arrives at a prison to conduct an interview with a photographer who has a deeply unsettling portfolio. Last Winter We Parted is a dark and twisting house of mirrors that explores the violence of aesthetics and the horrors of identity.

“Crime fiction that pushes past the bounds of genre, occupying its own nightmare realm.” The Los Angeles Times

LastWinter,WeParted • Translated by Allison Markin Powell On Sale Now • Trade Paperback • 240 Pages • 9781616956141

The Kingdom

The “Zen-Noir master” (Wall Street Journal) returns to the Tokyo of The Thief, where a solitary grifter named Yurika poses as a sex worker, carefully targeting high-profile johns for blackmail. But when a figure from Yurika’s past resurfaces, she finds herself in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with a shadowy, sadistic crime lord described by some as simply “a monster.”

“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

TheKingdom • Translated by Kalau Almony On Sale Now • Trade Paperback • 256 Pages • 9781616958107