Audition

Renaissance man for the modern age, Ryu Murakami has played drums for a rock group, made movies and hosted a TV talk show. His first novel, Almost Transparent Blue, written while he was still a student, was awarded Japan's most coveted literary prize and went on to sell over a million copies. He is also the author of In the Miso Soup and Piercing, both published in English by Bloomsbury. Ralph McCarthy is the translator of 69, In The Miso Soup and Piercing by Ryu Murakami and two collections of stories by Osamu Dazai.

'The prose in these passages is elegiac and affecting, but it has the sharp, visceral feel of the butcher's knife or surgeons scalpel a highly compulsive, one-sitting read, and Audition should add to the Renaissance Man's growing fanbase in the English speaking world' Irvine Welsh, Guardian PRAISE FOR PIERCING 'There are echoes here of Edgar Allan Poe and Dostoevsky - Murakami shares their fascination with the darkest layer of the soul, and the appalling isolation of the criminal. Creepy and gripping' The Times 'The fame, or even notoriety, of Ryu Murakami lies in his ability to write tightly plotted, well-written tales of violence, seedy sex and horror combined with a vivid sense of the neon-slashed but oppressive atmosphere of the Tokyo street, all underpinned with a fashionable nihilism' Sunday Telegraph 'A haunting Japanese version of a David Lynch nightmare' Guardian