Lady Joker / Kaoru Takamura ; translated from the Japanese by Marie Iida and Allison Markin Powell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Takamura, Kaoru, 1953- author.

Contributor:

Iida, Marie, translator.

Powell, Allison Markin, translator.

Alumni and Friends Memorial Book Fund.

Standardized Title:

Redi joka. English

Language:

English

Japanese

Subjects (All):

Beer industry--Japan--Fiction.

Social conditions.

Beer industry.

Japan--Social conditions--Fiction.

Kidnapping--Fiction.

Kidnapping.

Japan.

Alienation (Social psychology)--Fiction.

Alienation (Social psychology).

Revenge--Fiction.

Revenge.

Genre:

Fiction.

Novels.

Physical Description:

volumes ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Soho Crime, 2021-

Summary:

"This tour-de-force is widely regarded as the quintessential post-WWII Japanese novel. A plan to kidnap a major corporation's CEO becomes an allegory for the alienation of the individual self, a mirror to modern-day Japanese identity. In 1995 in Tokyo, five men meet at the racetrack every Sunday to bet on the horses. They have little in common except a disaffection with their lives. One is a poorly socialized but genius factory welder. One is a demoted detective with a chip on his shoulder. One is an ethnically Korean banker who is tired of being ostracized for his race. One is a truck driver who struggles to make ends meet; he is also the harried single parent of a teenage girl with down's syndrome. The fifth man, Monoi, a sixty-five-year-old drug store owner, is the one who brings them all together. Monoi has a hard past and a tragic present. He grew up in poverty during the war, and gave the best years of his life working for companies that didn't take care of him. Last summer, his only grandson was killed in a highly suspicious one-person car accident; shortly after, Monoi's son-in-law, the boy's father, a successful dentist, committed suicide after a correspondence with Hinode Beer Company, a huge conglomerate where his son had been interviewing. Snooping around, Monoi discovers a very strange chain of communication between his dead son-in-law and a blackmailer over a forgotten family secret. Monoi, alone in the world and intent on revenge, decides to put together a heist that will victimize the corporate behemoth that stole his family: he will kidnap Hinode's CEO and extract blood money from the corrupt financiers who back it. He enlists his four disaffected friends to help pull it off"-- Provided by publisher.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Alumni and Friends Memorial Book Fund.

ISBN:

9781616957018

1616957018

9781641290296

1641290293

OCLC:

1153514344