Death sentences / Kawamata Chiaki ; translated by Thomas Lamarre and Kazuko Y. Behrens ; foreword by Takayuki Tatsumi.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kawamata, Chiaki, 1948-

Contributor:

LaMarre, Thomas, 1959-

Behrens, Kazuko Y.

Standardized Title:

Genshi-gari. English

Language:

English

Japanese

Genre:

Science fiction.

Fiction.

Physical Description:

xxiii, 267 pages ; 21 cm

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2012]

Summary:

Japan, 1980s: A special police squad is tracking down one of the "afflicted" to recover the "stuff." The operation seems like a drug bust, but the "stuff" is actually some kind of text. Death Sentences-a work of science fiction that shares its conceit with the major motion picture The Ring-tells the story of a mysterious surrealist poem, penned in the 1940s, which, through low-tech circulation across time, kills its readers, including Arshile Gorky and Antonin Artaud, before sparking a wave of suicides after its publication in Japan. Mixing elements of Japanese detective story, horror, and science fiction, the novel ranges across time and space, from the Left Bank of Paris to the planet Mars.

Paris, 1948: André Breton anxiously awaits a young poet, Who May. He recalls their earlier encounter in New York City and the mysterious effects of reading Who May's poem "Other World." Upon meeting, Who May gives Breton another poem, "Mirror," an even more unsettling piece. Breton shares it with his fellow surrealists. Before Breton can discuss the text with him, Who May vanishes. Who May contacts Breton about a third work, "The Gold of Time," then slips into a coma and dies (or enters another dimension). Copies of the poem are mailed to all of Who May's friends-Breton, Gorky, Paul Éluard, Marcel Duchamp, and other famous surrealists and dadaists. Thus begins the "magic poem plague" that travels for centuries. Book jacket.

Contents:

Prologue: The tracker

Another world

The gold of time

Undiscovered century

The shade of the shadow of light

Voyagers

The final chapter: Oblivion.

Notes:

Translated from the Japanese.

ISBN:

9780816654543

0816654549

9780816654550

0816654557

OCLC:

759909871