Coin Locker Babies is Ryu
Murakami's cult cyperpunk novel. Two babies
are left in a Tokyo station coin locker and survive
against the odds, but their lives are forever tainted by
this inauspicious start. As they grow up, they join
the ranks of Toxitown: a district of addicts, freaks and
prostitutes. One becomes a bisexual rock star and looks
for his mother, while the other one, an athlete, seeks
revenge. This savage and stunning story unfolds in a
surrealistic whirl of violence. Coin Locker
Babies is translated from the Japanese by Stephen
Snyder and published by Pushkin Press 'A
cyber-Bildungsroman of playful breadth and uncertain
depth' Publishers Weekly 'A fascinating peek
into the weirdness of contemporary Japan' Oliver
Stone 'Like a cross between a Grimms fairy tale and
Katsuhiro Otomo's classic manga comic series
Akira... A deliriously ambitious novel...
recalls Thomas Pynchon.' Ben Jeffery, Times Literary
Supplement A great big pulsating parable . . .
wildly undisciplined, occasionally tongue-in-cheek.'
Washington Post 'The explosive rhythms of
hard rock, the intensity of emotions, and the highly
vivid images make . . . Murakami's postmodern novel an
exceptionally successful one' World Literature
Today Ryu Murakami is the
enfant terrible of contemporary Japanese literature.
Awarded the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1976 for his
first book, a novel about a group of young people
drowned in sex and drugs, he has gone on to explore with
cinematic intensity the themes of violence and
technology in contemporary Japanese society. His novels
include Coin Locker Babies,
Sixty-Nine, Popular Hits of the Showa
Era, Audition, In the Miso Soup
and From the Fatherland, with Love. Murakami
is also a screenwriter and a director; his films include
Tokyo Decadence, Audition and
Because of You.
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