قصة الكتاب :
Published in IP/NN: Abe Kazushige kessakushū [IP/NN: Masterpieces
by Abe Kazushige].
Kōdansha (Kōdansha Bunko), 2011. 392 pp. ¥676. ISBN 978-4-
06-277040-8.
Originally published in Shinchō, Mar. 1997.
Abe Kazushige
Born in 1968. Graduated from the Japan Institute of the Moving
Image. His debut novel Amerika no yoru [American Night] won the
37th Gunzō New Writers Award in 1994. Also awarded the 132nd
Akutagawa Prize in 2004 for Gurando fināre [Grande Finale]; the
Itō Sei Literary Prize and the Mainichi Publishing Culture Award
in 2004 for Shinsemia [Sinsemilla]; and the Tanizaki Jun’ichirō Prize
in 2010 for Pisutoruzu [Pistils]

In Shibuya, the center of Tokyo’s most exciting youth culture, the protagonist
Onuma works as a young projectionist in a cinema. He has a secret, though—for
five years he trained at a school for spies. One day, he reads in a newspaper that
some colleagues from that time have died in a traffic accident. A disturbing shadow
starts to loom over his tranquil existence. Someone is following him; he has runins
with gangsters. Then there is the mysterious film left with him by a man who
was once a colleague from the spy school. Could the whereabouts of a nuclear
device, which the school’s former headmaster obtained from a criminal organization,
somehow be behind all of this?
The narrative takes the form of Onuma’s diary, and everything is written from
his viewpoint. As the diary entries take on an increasingly delusional hue, the
reader is drawn into the vortex of a tale packed with hints of danger. Characters
that seem to be Onuma’s other selves run rampant through the story, blurring the
line between truth and falsehood until eventually the story reaches its strange
final scene. With its crisp literary style, unflinching gaze at violence, and sensitivity
that exquisitely captures the desolation of contemporary cities, this is one of
the works that symbolizes the birth of a new Japanese literature. (NK)