The magnum opus by Japanese literary sensation Fuminori Nakamura, Cult X is a story that dives into the psychology of fringe religion, obsession, and social disaffection.
Fuminori Nakamura was born in 1977 and graduated from Fukushima University in 2000. He has won numerous prizes for his writing, including the Ōe Prize, Japan's largest literary award; the David L. Goodis Award for Noir Fiction; 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 The Gun, The Kingdom, Evil and the Mask, The Boy in the Earth, and Last Winter, We Parted.
A Japanese Bestseller, with over 400,000 copies sold
A LitHub Most Anticipated Crime, Mystery, and Thriller Title of
2018
A Library Journal Best Book of 2018
Praise for Cult X
"You'll think about Nakamura's questions long after you've closed
his book's covers. He uses the conventions of a genre to prop up a
tent for big ideas about groupthink and individual responsibility.
If you feel a few frissons along the way? Consider how easily you
might be seduced into a cult, and then take a long, cold
shower."
—NPR
"Raises the literary stakes to literally cosmic proportions . . .
Cult X, translated into handsome, unadorned English by Kalau
Almony, pushes the boundaries of the thriller genre to an extreme
degree. Mr. Nakamura has written a daunting, challenging saga of
good and evil on a Dostoevskian scale. Those who persevere to its
finale may well feel the richer for it."
—Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal
"Nakamura's impassioned writing is part of a continuum that
stretches from Dostoevsky to Camus to Ōe."
—Los Angeles Times
"Nakamura’s talent for characterization and willingness to engage
make this a novel worth wrestling with."
—Los Angeles Review of Books
"One of the most buzzed about novels of the season."
—Salon
"The Fuminori Nakamura novel we’ve been waiting for . . .
[Nakamura's] talent has always been for exploring the lives of
those on the fringes of society, the damaged and the ostracized,
and that remains at the heart of this work."
—The Japan Times
"Taking as his inspiration the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo
subway, award-winning author Nakamura weaves together politics,
religion, and science—including biology, cosmology, and quantum
physics—into a fascinating noir brimming with insightful commentary
on totalitarianism that is especially apt for our times."
—Booklist, Starred Review
"Gripping . . . This noirish thriller will resonate with Ryu
Murakami fans."
—Publishers Weekly
"At its heart [Cult X] is an investigation—first for a lost woman,
but ultimately into humanity's darkest motivations and the
temptation to follow them."
—The Sunday Times
“Cult X was inspired by Aum Shinrikyo, the group responsible for
the 1995 sarin attack in the Tokyo subway, but that is just a
starting point, for Nakamura weaves in themes of personal
commitment, politics, religion and much more. It’s not, however,
for the faint of heart.”
—BookPage
"A magnificently unsettling work."
—Words Without Borders
"[Cult X] twists adeptly toward a horror-laden plot of mass
destruction . . . Horrifying, yes—but worth
confronting."
—Kingdom Books
"The sprawling novel, told from multiple perspectives and with long
forays into the science of the universe, is an epic endeavor that
deserves to stand next to the works of Ellroy and Bolaño in the
canon of lengthy crime fiction."
—CrimeReads
Praise for Fuminori Nakamura
Japan Objects' Best Japanese Authors of All Time
“Crime fiction that pushes past the bounds of genre, occupying its
own nightmare realm . . . Guilt or innocence is not the issue; we
are corrupted, complicit, just by living in society.”
—Los Angeles Times
“A suspenseful study of obsession . . . Love, even illicit love,
has a way of bringing out the best or the worst in a person.”
—The New York Times
“Few protagonists in modern crime fiction are as alienated as those
in the challenging, violent, grotesque tales of Japanese author
Fuminori Nakamura.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“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
Ask a Question About this Product More... |