Promotional Information

In Tokyo a college student's discovery and eventual obsession with a stolen handgun awakens something dark inside him and threatens to consume not only his life but also his humanity. Nakamura's Japanese debut is a noir-spun tale that probes the violence inherent to aesthetics.

About the Author

Fuminori Nakamura was born in 1977 and graduated from Fukushima University in 2000. He has won numerous prizes for his writing, including the Oe Prize, Japan's largest literary award; the David L. Goodis Award; and the prestigious Akutagawa Prize. The Thief, his first novel to be translated into English, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His other novels include Evil and the Mask and Last Winter, We Parted.


From the Hardcover edition.

Reviews

Praise for The Gun

A Wall Street Journal Best Mystery of 2016
A World Literature Today Notable Translation for 2016
An ABA IndieNext Selection
BookRiot 100 Must-Read Novels of Noir

"A thriller in the same elevated sense as is Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment or Camus’s The Stranger . . . ​Nature versus nurture, free will versus fate: Such are the themes that flicker almost subliminally through this shocking narrative, which also emits echoes of Poe and Mishima."
—Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal

"More a suspenseful study of obsession than a crime novel, Nakamura’s noir story, translated by Allison Markin Powell, is about liberation . . . Love, even illicit love, has a way of bringing out the best—or the worst—in ­a person."
—The New York Times Book Review

"Chilling."
—Toronto Star

"[Nakamura] tightens the screws on his character with eerie effectiveness, making the inevitable outcome shudder on the page."
—Chicago Tribune

"[The Gun] offers an addictive—one might even say compulsive—night’s worth of chillingly unnerving entertainment."
—The Richmond Times-Dispatch

"[Nakamura] straddles the crime-literary fiction boundary like few others. It gives a new twist to Chekhov’s rule: a gun mentioned in the first act—or here, a gun found by a dead body in the opening pages—must eventually be fired."
—Maclean's

"A fascinating, addictive thriller."
—The Japan News

"[A] powerful existential thriller."
—The Sunday Times (UK)

"A compelling study of a man whose deep wounds begin to open when, by accident, he stumbles across a gun. Nakamura understands how a life can swirl and eddy around an inanimate object, becoming so possessed by it as to suddenly be not a life at all."
—Brian Evenson, author of Windeye

"[Nakamura] spins dark, brooding tales of crime, deftly using acts such as murder and theft as unsettling ruminations on the human psyche and its predilection for darkness."
—The Straits Times (Singapore)

"One of the jewels in the Japanese crime-fiction crown, [Nakamura's] debut novel features a nihilistic anti-hero filled with terrible rage."
—South China Morning Post

"An unforgettable, heart-pounding journey into the world of psychological suspense."
—Crimespree Magazine

"The psychological downward spiral into obsession is what drives this book, and during my reading, I couldn’t help but think that Alfred Hitchcock could have created a brilliant film adaptation."
—Bruce Tierney, BookPage

"An intense, claustrophobic, and effective noir/philosophical thriller."
—International Noir Fiction

"Utterly brilliant."
—CounterPunch

"Another masterwork from one of the best modern practitioners of the crime novel."
—World Literature Today

"Nakamura does obsessive and delusional very well . . . A fine first effort by a talented writer."
—The Complete Review

"Chilling."
—Reading Matters

"No crime author out there is currently doing what Fuminori Nakamura is doing. I’ve read every novel of his Soho Press has translated and they’ve all been unique in their subject matter and tone and exactly the same in terms of effectiveness and the wonderfully bizarre, oblique way in which Nakamura approaches the genre."
—Gabino Iglesias, Dead End Follies

"[An] intense work of suspense and increasing madness."
—Kingdom Books

"An incredibly tense story about how obsession can mold your actions and how an inanimate object can become animate in the 'right' pair of hands."
—Old Firehouse Books, Ft. Collins, Colorado

"The author does more in less than 200 pages than most authors could pull off in 600 . . . Stripped down, focused, intense, and worth every second you spend reading."
—Bookgasm

"Suspenseful to the last page, Nakamura’s existential noir translates well to America, [and is] a timely allegory for our gun-crazed culture."
—Library Journal

"This portrait of obsession and madness starts slowly but soon exerts an almost hypnotic pull as we contemplate both the extent of Nishikawa’s alienation and the primal allure of these little machines for killing."
—Booklist

"Drenched—literally—in noir atmosphere . . . Almost a thesis on the seductive potential of handguns."
—Kirkus Reviews

"[Nakamura] paints the story in short strokes, capturing nuance in simple, short sentences, somehow squeezing out the personal in cold prose. His story is small in the sense that it is only one person’s strange world we see; yet universal in the way it characterizes how we might be led into it."
—Ronald Tierney

Praise for Fuminori Nakamura

Japan Objects' Best Japanese Authors of All Time

"This slim, icy, outstanding thriller, reminiscent of Muriel Spark and Patricia Highsmith, should establish Fuminori Nakamura as one of the most interesting Japanese crime novelists at work today."
—USA Today

"The Thief brings to mind Highsmith, Mishima and Dostoevsky . . . A chilling existential thriller leaving readers in doubt without making them feel in any way cheated."
—The Wall Street Journal, Best Book of the Year Selection

"Deliciously twisted . . . Nakamura bend[s] the line between what is good and what is evil until it nearly breaks. It's impressive how a book so dark can be so much fun."
—Grantland

"His grasp of the seamy underbelly of the city is why Nakamura is one of the most award-winning young guns of Japanese hardboiled detective writing."
—Daily Beast

"Nakamura's prose is cut-to-the-bone lean, but it moves across the page with a seductive, even voluptuous agility."
—Richmond Times-Dispatch