{"product_id":"the-rope-artist-isbn-9781641295697","title":"The Rope Artist","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe 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.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTwo 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs 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. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eUnflinching 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.\u003cu\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eThe Rope Artist\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/u\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e “Nakamura specializes in combining elements from disparate genres. \u003ci\u003eThe Rope Artist\u003c\/i\u003e, translated by Sam Bett, is his most extreme juxtaposition yet. The book mixes the tropes and trappings of a noir novel with the tortured perceptions of a Poe protagonist and the cruel pleasures of the Marquis de Sade.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—Tom Nolan, \u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “[Nakamura] employs the tactics of pulp novelists to tell a story that exists somewhere in the nexus of grindhouse and Shinto religious practices. The surprisingly philosophical narrative also investigates power dynamics in sexual relationships, and the nature of dominance and submission in role play.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Toronto Star\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Nakamura’s cool, calculated prose is the perfect fit for this seedy tale.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—CrimeReads\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Nakamura has a penchant for the dark and depraved . . . A mind-bending mystery that burrows into the brains of its characters and excavates the darkness of their inner lives.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eTokyo Weekender\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Nakamura fearlessly portrays violence, eroticism and inner darkness that slowly unravels like a tangled rope.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—GaijinPot\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A surreal tsunami of sex, politics, religion, imperialism, and haunting memories . . . Identities are altered, licentious secrets revealed in Nakamura’s unflinching, emotionally charged rewarding read.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—The National Book Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThe Rope Artist\u003c\/i\u003e is full of damaged lives and dark reflection, more concerned with what (often very twisted things) lurks within the heart than laying out a neat murder-mystery.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—The Complete Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Raw eroticism, untethered justice, unreliable narratives, and psychological twists infuse this complex literary mystery with edgy danger and lingering existential questions.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Gorgeous and lurid. Definitely not for the faint of heart.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eDeadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[Nakamura] produces a stunning climactic surprise that will make you think of this particular case, and erotic bondage generally, in a whole new way. Spellbinding.”\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cu\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePraise for Fuminori Nakamura\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/u\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cu\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/u\u003e \u003cb\u003eJapan Objects' Best Japanese Authors of All Time\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[A] lurid and intellectually ambitious new thriller . . . Every time you think you grasp what’s going on, Nakamura reminds you that you are not in control here. Perhaps you are never in control.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Nakamura's impassioned writing is part of a continuum that stretches from Dostoevsky to Camus to Ōe.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e “You’ll think about Nakamura’s questions long after you’ve closed his book’s covers.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e—NPR\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “[Nakamura] has made a career out of pushing the boundaries of  existential horror, shining a light on the darkest shadows of humanity .  . . This chilling psychological mystery about a  violent crime promises not to disappoint. Expect anything but a happy  ending.”\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Japan Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eFuminori Nakamura\u003c\/b\u003e was born in 1977 and graduated from Fukushima University in 2000. He won the 2002 Shinchō Literary Prize for New Writers for his first novel, \u003ci\u003eThe Gun\u003c\/i\u003e; the Noma New Literary Prize for \u003ci\u003eShade\u003c\/i\u003e in 2004; and the 2005 Akutagawa Prize for \u003ci\u003eThe Boy in the Earth\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003ci\u003eThe Thief\u003c\/i\u003e, his first novel to be translated into English, won the 2010 Kenzaburo Ōe Prize, was a finalist for the \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times \u003c\/i\u003eBook Prize, and was a Wall Street Journal Best Fiction of 2012 selection. He also won NoirCon’s David L. Goodis Award in 2014, the Bunkamura Dumago prize for \u003ci\u003eMy Annihilation\u003c\/i\u003e in 2016, the Chunichi Cultural Award in 2020, and the Noma Literary Prize for \u003ci\u003eThe Line\u003c\/i\u003e in 2024. His novels have been turned into 7 movies and translated into 15 languages.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSam Bett \u003c\/b\u003eis a fiction writer and Japanese translator. His translation work has won the Japan-US Friendship Commission Prize and been shortlisted for the International Booker Prize.\u003cb\u003e1\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e When I was a kid, I got sucked into a tiny whirlpool.\u003cbr\u003e      The waves were not especially high. Something heavy pulled me down, then my feet lost touch with the bottom and I went under, sinking into the abyss. Swallowing my juvenile body, the whirlpool did the only thing that it knew how to do: spin downward.\u003cbr\u003e      It hit me that this whirlpool was a part of a gigantic ocean, as obvious as that may sound. Appearing out of nowhere, it swallowed me like it had stuffed me in a bag. Water rushed into my throat, ignoring my attempts to cough it out. I felt the whirlpool passing through my body, but a kind stranger scooped me up. My face broke through the surface of the water.\u003cbr\u003e       “Whirlpool,” I told this strange adult, but all he did was shake his head. You’d think he thought I had pretended I was drowning. A neglected child, oblivious to all the trouble he might cause, trying to capture the attention of any adult who would listen. To a grown man, the water was embarrassingly shallow. The arm that he had hooked around me was suntanned, two big moles in a row on the part of his skin just under my nose.\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e     She vanished\u003c\/i\u003e, I thought. When I was being sucked down by the whirlpool, in the middle of it all, I could have sworn I saw the figure of a woman. But no, it must have been some kind of fantasy, washing over me. A woman in the middle of the water, bobbing in the waves. A woman swatting her bony fingers at the waves that threatened to tear off her bathing suit like countless hands. She had to. Otherwise, her body would be seen by all these people. Her long black hair fanned out and undulated in the water. Through the blueness of the moving sea, her body was a distant flash of white. But it had vanished. Had I really seen her? I began to have my doubts. In the kind arms of the stranger, I was pulled out of the water to the safety of the beach.\u003cbr\u003e      My head was spinning. Colorful food carts selling ice cream and soft drinks lined the beach. Watery blue and pink, in harmony with the colors of the ocean and the sky. Little by little, though, the palette of the landscape fell out of balance. It was like the sky itself had sighed at me. As if to say, \u003ci\u003eYou had to show up, didn’t you? As if to say, We were in perfect harmony. Then you showed up.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e THE INVESTIGATORS CRAWLED across the carpet on their hands and knees. The one tasked with capturing pictures flashed his camera. It made a glaring burst of light; the afterimage lingered on my retinae like a bruise. A mass of red, purple and blue, floating persistently before\u003cbr\u003e my eyes.\u003cbr\u003e       “What’s wrong?” Ichioka asked. “This can’t be your first dead body.”\u003cbr\u003e      I had spaced out. His tone contained an air of ridicule. But I had a way of smiling at this sort of thing.\u003cbr\u003e       “Sorry about that,” I said, trying to come up with an excuse. “I’m still drunk after last night.”\u003cbr\u003e      My head ached. Again the camera flashed. I wished I could escape the repeated bursts of light.\u003cbr\u003e      What made me think about the woman and the whirlpool? I suppose I could have thought about it voluntarily. Every few years, I seemed compelled to recollect what I had seen that day, as if the memory eclipsed my consciousness. Last year, for instance, that night I stepped out for some cigarettes. At the edge of my vision, I felt a shadow darker than the rest. When I asked myself what it could be, my thoughts turned to the woman and the whirlpool. I moved in the direction of the shadow, but it was nothing, just a bar closed down for the night, no light behind the sign. It was well into fall, but a cicada clung to the telephone pole beside the sign, bent on drawing out a sap the concrete pole could never give.\u003cbr\u003e      Again, the flash. My heart sped up. No, it had been racing this whole time. Since the moment I had stepped into the room.\u003cbr\u003e       “We’ve seen a crime like this before.”\u003cbr\u003e      Ichioka looked at me again. The stubborn afterimage covered nearly half his face.\u003cbr\u003e       “The door was unlocked when we got here, but it doesn’t look like somebody broke in . . . it’s a little aggravating that his cell phone’s gone, but we found a couple of business cards inside his planner.”\u003cbr\u003e       “Right.” Was my voice shaking? “I saw that.” \u003cbr\u003e      The victim was a man by the name of Kazunari Yoshikawa. This was apparently his residence. The way we found the body, his knees were bent into a deep V, tucked underneath him. It had begun to smell offensive, so they carted it away. Above a section of the carpet where three dents, left by something heavy, formed a triangle, two insects flew in circles around each other.\u003cbr\u003e      Maiko’s card was one of the few objects in the planner. My Maiko? Why did this man have her card? But there were other signs. The shirts and jeans hanging on the balcony. The excessive use of clothespins, bordering on neurotic. The peculiar way in which the socks stuffed on the storage shelf weren’t folded one over the other, at the ankles, but were tied in knots, like pretzels. There was vanilla yogurt in the fridge, caramel Häagen-Dazs in the freezer. Chamomile tea beside the thermo pot. All of her favorite things. Even the J-pop CDs that she used to listen to. Had Maiko been living in this place, with this guy? Is this where she had gone when she left me? But what about the body? This was too—\u003cbr\u003e      Through the bruised colors of the afterimage, I saw a bed. Small enough two people would be sticking to each other if they shared it. Maiko and that man. That dead man, on that tiny bed, crawling over Maiko’s body. My heart sped up again. I saw a tiny black line in the corner of the room.\u003cbr\u003e       “Did you check over here?” I asked the nearest investigator.\u003cbr\u003e       “We’ll go over it again later. See something?”\u003cbr\u003e       “No.”\u003cbr\u003e      It was an eyelash. Blackened with mascara. There were no women in our party, so it had to be from someone who’d been living here. One of the investigators must have picked it up with his shoe cover and unknowingly left it in the corner. It could have been me. That black line looked like a slash mark, like a crack left in the scenery. A hole torn in the fabric of my life. My chest was thumping. As my fingers neared the eyelash, they shook uncontrollably. The second that I picked it up, I felt a strange sensation in my fingertips, through my gloves. Like I was making contact with an abstract notion, something you’re normally unable to touch. As I lifted this crack from the floor, my pinched fingers traveled hesitantly toward my pocket. What the hell was I trying to do? It made no sense to hide a piece of evidence like this, when they’d already discovered loads of hair and fingerprints. Hide? Hide what? I put the eyelash in my pocket. What was I doing?\u003cbr\u003e       “Hey.”\u003cbr\u003e      I heard a voice behind me. But no. No one was there. It was Ichioka’s voice, though. Yelling at somebody in the next room. Maybe someone had flashed the camera in his eyes. I took my hand out of my pocket. Holding my cigarettes. As if to show someone that I had just been\u003cbr\u003e reaching for my cigarettes this entire time. I left the room, stepping on scattered weeklies and conservative magazines.\u003cbr\u003e       “Togashi—oh, time for a smoke?”\u003cbr\u003e       “Oh, no.”\u003cbr\u003e       “It’s fine, we’re almost done.”\u003cbr\u003e      I headed for the hallway. This was bad, I thought. Why couldn’t she have left it looking like a break-in, or a robbery? Left a window or a door ajar . . .\u003cbr\u003e      Again a flash of light. I was back inside the whirlpool. What was I thinking? I was tired. I had to remember where I was. The residence of a victim. And like some slacker detective, I was ducking out to have a cigarette. Back to reality.\u003cbr\u003e      Once I was out front, I saw Hayama. Squinty eyes. He was standing outside the fence of the apartment building, having a cigarette.\u003cbr\u003e       “. . . Hi there.”\u003cbr\u003e      Smoking with Hayama made me depressed. But it was too late. He had seen the pack of  cigarettes in my hand.\u003cbr\u003e       “Sounds like the director of the first division paid us a visit,” I said. “But Ichioka told him that we had it covered.”\u003cbr\u003e      Hayama gave me a blank look. Blinking periodically.\u003cbr\u003e       “He said it was a simple enough case to handle on our own.”\u003cbr\u003e      Up until that point I had been smiling, but I realized this was not something to smile about. My whole body went tense.\u003cbr\u003e      Were the rumors true? They say that several years ago, when a female nurse was murdered, Hayama had declined to book the suspect, in spite of overwhelming evidence, and let him get away, just so he could push him to the brink of insanity. The man turned himself in, but Hayama told him to go home. He refused to acknowledge his confession, so that he could summon him repeatedly and force the man to tell him the cruel details of his murder of the nurse. The crime had been suspended in midair. Why didn’t the man surrender himself to some other officer, like at the nearest police station? Was it true the man had hanged himself?\u003cbr\u003e      I caught Hayama’s line of sight. My fingers were shaking. They were my own hands, but he had noticed they were shaking before I did. Even so, Hayama said nothing about it. People say he used to belong to the first division. The only person that he cared about was himself.\u003cbr\u003e       “. . . I guess a couple had been living there together. Wonder for how long.”\u003cbr\u003e      I was trying to smooth things over, but he just squinted and stared.\u003cbr\u003e       “The man was probably there a while,” he finally said. “But the woman moved in recently.”\u003cbr\u003e       “. . . Is that so?”\u003cbr\u003e       “All the girly stuff in there is new . . . Check out the carpet underneath the furniture . . . The marks underneath the stuff that looks like it was his are deeper . . . You can tell that stuff ’s been moved around.”\u003cbr\u003e      Trash was scattered in the park in front of the apartment building. As if there had been some kind of a festival the night before. But my life had no room for festivals. The debris only got deeper, one day to the next.\u003cbr\u003e      Hayama scanned the park and walked over to his car. His suit was understated, but it looked expensive, classy. Thing is, though, he didn’t make it seem like he appreciated a good suit. More like the suit was weighing him down.\u003cbr\u003e      Ichioka came out of the apartment. Maybe he’d been waiting for Hayama to leave.\u003cbr\u003e      Was it really the same Maiko? I couldn’t believe it. This case was way too cut and dry. Like nearly all the cases inundating our society. I had an awful headache, the kind that clamps down on your temples. She’s such an idiot. But who was worse? Maiko, or me, for thinking I was cut out to become a detective?","brand":"Soho Crime","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305443184869,"sku":"NP9781641295697","price":18.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781641295697.jpg?v=1767741282","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-rope-artist-isbn-9781641295697","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}