Audiobooks by Fuminori Nakamura

"The aftermath of the murder of a bondage teacher reveals 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—then 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 Sherlock Holmesian colleague Hayama is morally upright to a fault, with a stalwart commitment to the truth and nearly superhuman powers of deduction. When Hayama notices a dangerous measure of darkness within Togashi, he embarks on a parallel investigation, which soon spirals out of control. Unflinching in its flayed-raw treatment of identity, violence, sexuality, power, the occult, and the divine, The Rope Artist is both viscerally painful and unexpectedly hopeful—a genre homage that shines a light on the most dangerous elements of the human psyche."

Fuminori Nakamura (Author), Brian Nishii, Kurt Kanazawa (Narrator)

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My Annihilation

"What transforms a person into a killer? Could it be something as small as a suggestion? Turn this page, and you may forfeit your entire life. With My Annihilation, Fuminori Nakamura, master of literary noir, has constructed a puzzle box of a narrative in the form of a confessional diary that implicates its reader in a heinous crime. Delving relentlessly into the darkest corners of human consciousness, My Annihilation interrogates the unspeakable thoughts all humans share that can be monstrous when brought to life, revealing with disturbing honesty the psychological motives of a killer."

Fuminori Nakamura (Author), Brian Nishii (Narrator)

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Cult X

"The magnum opus by Akutagawa Prize-winner Fuminori Nakamura, Cult X is a story that dives into the psychology of fringe religion, obsession, and social disaffection. When Toru Narazaki's girlfriend, Ryoko, disappears, he tries to track her down, despite the warnings of a private detective he's hired to find her. Ryoko's past is shrouded in mystery, but the one concrete clue to her whereabouts is a previous address where she lived: in a compound in the heart of Tokyo, with a group that seems to be a cult led by a charismatic guru with a revisionist Buddhist scheme of life, death, and society. 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 beneath its surface. Inspired by the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, Cult X is an exploration of what draws individuals into extremism. This multi-faceted novel is nothing less than a tour de force, capturing the connections between astrophysics, neuroscience, and religion. It is an invective against predatory corporate consumerism and exploitative geopolitics, and it is a love story about compassion in the face of nihilism."

Fuminori Nakamura (Author), Brian Nishii (Narrator)

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The Boy in the Earth

"Fuminori Nakamura's Akutagawa Prize-winner plunges us into the depths of a young man's winding, troubled psyche. An unnamed taxi driver in Tokyo has experienced a rupture in his everyday life. He cannot stop daydreaming of suicide, envisioning himself returning to the earth in what soon become terrifying blackout episodes. His live-in girlfriend, Sayuko, is in a similarly bad phase, surrendering to alcoholism to escape the memory of her miscarriage. He meets with the director of the orphanage where he once lived, and must confront awful memories of his past and an abusive family before determining what to do next."

Fuminori Nakamura (Author), Brian Nishii (Narrator)

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The Kingdom

"Yurika is a freelancer in the Tokyo underworld. She poses as a prostitute; carefully targeting powerful, high-profile men - who she then drugs takes incriminating photos of to sell for blackmail purposes. She knows very little about the organisation she's working for and is perfectly satisfied with the arrangement, as long as it means she doesn't have to reveal anything about her identity. But when a figure from Yurika's past emerges, she finds herself in a trap that she can’t seem to find a way out of…"

Fuminori Nakamura (Author), Lucie Kondo (Narrator)

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The Kingdom

"Yurika is a freelancer in the Tokyo underworld. She poses as a prostitute, carefully targeting potential Johns, selecting powerful and high-profile men. When she is alone with them, she drugs them and takes incriminating photos to sell for blackmail purposes. She knows very little about the organization she's working for, and is perfectly satisfied with the arrangement, as long as it means she doesn't have to reveal anything about her identity, either. She operates alone and lives a private, solitary life, doing her best to lock away painful memories. But when a figure from Yurika's past emerges, she realizes there is someone out there who knows all her secrets: her losses, her motivations, her every move. There are whispers of a crime lord named Kizaki-'a monster,' she is told-and Yurika finds herself trapped in a game of cat and mouse. Is she wily enough to escape one of the most sadistic men in Tokyo?"

Fuminori Nakamura (Author), Lucie Kondo (Narrator)

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The Gun

"On a night-time walk along a Tokyo riverbank, a young man named Nishikawa stumbles on a dead body, besides which is lying a gun. From the moment Nishikawa makes the decision to take the gun, the world around him blurs. But Nishikawa's life becomes unexpectedly complicated: he finds himself romantically involved with two women, while his estranged biological father lies dying in a hospital. Through it all, he can't stop thinking about the gun - and the four bullets preloaded in its chamber."

Fuminori Nakamura (Author), Brian Nishii (Narrator)

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The Gun

"The award-winning debut novel by Japanese noir master Fuminori Nakamura, translated into English for the first time. From the moment university student Nishikawa spots the gun next to the dead man he's stumbled across on a nighttime walk, the world around him blurs. The gun--loaded with four bullets--brings an intoxicating sense of excitement to his life. But soon merely possessing the gun is not enough. He must shoot it. Fuminori Nakamura's presence in the US has been steadily increasing since Soho's first publication of The Thief. A young, exciting Japanese author who has won Japan's prestigious Oe Prize (The Thief), Akutagawa Prize (The Boy in the Earth) and Shincho Literary Prize (A Gun). Nakamura's books always get great review coverage. Praise for Fuminori Nakamura 'This slim, icy, outstanding thriller, reminiscent of Muriel Spark and Patricia Highsmith, should establish Fuminori Nakamura as one of the most interesting Japanese crime novelists at work today.' --USA Today 'The Thief brings to mind Highsmith, Mishima and Doestoevsky . . . A chilling existential thriller leaving readers in doubt without making them feel in any way cheated.' --The Wall Street Journal, Best Book of the Year Selection 'Crime fiction that pushes past the bounds of genre, occupying its own nightmare realm . . . For Nakamura, like [Seicho] Matsumoto, guilt or innocence is not the issue; we are corrupted, complicit, just by living in society. The ties that bind, in other words, are rules beyond our making.' --Los Angeles Times Fuminori Nakamura was born in 1977 and graduated from Fukushima University in 2000. He has won numerous prizes for his writing, including the Oe Prize, Japan's largest literary award, and the prestigious Akutagawa Prize. The Thief, his first novel to be translated into English, was a finalist for the Los Angeles TimesBook Prize. He is the recipient of the David L. Goodis Award for Noir Fiction. He lives in Tokyo with his wife."

Fuminori Nakamura (Author), Brian Nishii (Narrator)

Audiobook

Last Winter, We Parted

"Instantly reminiscent of the work of Osamu Dazai and Patricia Highsmith, Fuminori Nakamura's latest novel is a dark and twisting house of mirrors that philosophically explores the violence of aesthetics and the horrors of identity. A young writer arrives at a prison to interview a convict. The writer has been commissioned to write a full account of the case, from its bizarre and grisly details to the nature of the man behind the crime. The suspect, a world-renowned photographer named Kiharazaka, has a deeply unsettling portfolio—lurking beneath the surface of each photograph is an acutely obsessive fascination with his subject. He stands accused of murdering two women—both burned alive—and will likely face the death penalty. But something isn't quite right, and as the young writer probes further, his doubts about this man as a killer intensify. He soon discovers the desperate, twisted nature of all who are connected to the case, struggling to maintain his sense of reason and justice. Is Kiharazaka truly guilty, or will he die to protect someone else? Evoking Ry┼½nosuke Akutagawa's Hell Screen and Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, Fuminori Nakamura has crafted a chilling novel that asks a deceptively sinister question: Is it possible to truly capture the essence of another human being?"

Fuminori Nakamura (Author), Feodor Chin, P. J. Ochlan, Richard Powers (Narrator)

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Evil and the Mask

"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 dedicate to causing 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."

Fuminori Nakamura (Author), Kirby Heyborne (Narrator)

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The Thief

"The Thief is a seasoned pickpocket. Anonymous in his tailored suit, he weaves in and out of Tokyo crowds, stealing wallets from strangers so smoothly sometimes he doesn’t even remember the snatch. Most people are just a blur to him, nameless faces from whom he chooses his victims. He has no family, no friends, no connections … but he does have a past, which finally catches up with him when Ishikawa, his first partner, reappears in his life, and offers him a job he can’t refuse. It’s an easy job: tie up an old rich man, steal the contents of the safe. No one gets hurt. Only the day after the job does he learn that the old man was a prominent politician, and that he was brutally killed after the robbery. And now the thief is caught in a tangle even he might not be able to escape."

Fuminori Nakamura (Author), Charlie Thurston (Narrator)

Audiobook

Audiobooks by Fuminori Nakamura

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