Korean Title: Hwacha
Author: Miyuki Miyabe
Translator: Young-nan Park
Publisher: Sia
462 pages | 223*152mm
| Important! Please read before you order! |
| >>>This book is written in Korean. |
About This Book
The horror in this beautifully fashioned tale of stolen identity lies
not in the cold-blooded crimes but in the motive -- a desperate hunger
for consumer goods. Shunsuke Honma, a widowed 43-year-old Tokyo police
inspector with a 10-year-old son, is on disability leave. The boring
cycle of idleness punctuated by painful physical therapy sessions comes
to a halt when a nephew asks for Honma's help in finding his missing
fiancee, whom he knows as Shoko Sekine. As Honma's search intensifies,
he realizes the fiancee had actually assumed Sekine's identity and
possibly killed her. For the American reader, the jewel in this
enormously compelling novel is the portrait of working- and middle-class
Japanese getting caught in a cycle of astronomical personal debt in
order to enjoy the good life. Also eye-opening is Japan's elaborate
registry system for keeping track of its citizenry. In order to become
Shoko Sekine, the impostor had to perpetrate an ingeniously elaborate
series of hoaxes and lies. Honma is tenacious, methodical, an attentive
listener with a retentive memory and the ability to connect disparate
bits of information. The trail takes him back through the real Sekine's
history and into the life of the other woman, whose family ran afoul of
vicious loan sharks. Miyabe drives her complex plot with spare prose,
combining expert pacing and psychological nuance to ultimately haunting
effect. (Feb.) FYI: All She Was worth was named Best Novel of the year
and Best Mystery for 1992 in Japan. --From Publishers Weekly
Availability: Usually ships in 5~10 business days.
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