基本信息出版社：Penguin Books
页码：224 页
出版日期：2006年03月
ISBN：014303569X
条形码：9780143035695
装帧：平装
正文语种：英语
外文书名：味增烫里

内容简介 From postmodern Renaissance man Ryu Murakami, master of the psychothriller and director of Tokyo Decadence, comes this hair-raising roller-coaster ride through the nefarious neon-lit world of Tokyo’s sex industry. In the Miso Soup tells of Frank, an overweight American tourist who has hired Kenji to take him on a guided tour of Tokyo’s sleazy nightlife. But Frank’s behavior is so strange that Kenji begins to entertain a horrible suspicion—that his new client is in fact the serial killer currently terrorizing the city. It is not until later, however, that Kenji learns exactly how much he has to fear and how irrevocably his encounter with this great white whale of an American will change his life.
作者简介 On a recent trip to Britain, bestselling author Haruki Murakami was asked who his favourite Japanese author was. He replied that it was his namesake, Ryu Murakami. Renaissance man for the postmodern age, Ryu Murakami has played drums for a rock group, made movies and hosted a TV talk show. Whilst he was still a student, his first novel Almost Transparent Blue was awarded Japan's most coveted literary prize and went on to sell over a million copies. Ralph McCarthy is the translator of 69 by Ryu Murakami and two collections of stories by Osamu Dazai. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
编辑推荐 From Booklist
Easygoing young Kenji makes good money guiding Americans through Tokyo's seamy nightlife. His teenage girlfriend has no objections, as long as he reserves New Year's Eve for her. But Kenji's latest client, a simmering psychopath called Frank, disrupts those holiday plans. He wants to regale Kenji with crazy monologues as he hypnotizes low-level sex workers. A fat man with superhuman strength, skin that's metallic to the touch, and an unsettling habit of telling contradictory lies, Frank immediately raises the guide's hackles. Kenji even suspects that this ugliest of Americans dismembered a local schoolgirl and immolated a homeless man. But until he can prove his suspicions--and for a disturbing while after--Kenji will keep leading this monster man from one bizarre scene to another. It's a compelling nightmare for Kenji and the reader, who both hope he'll either wake up screaming or escape and alert the cops. Instead, everyone remains in evil's thrall until it's too late. A wicked meditation on the worst traits of American and Japanese society, this is a creepy culture clash indeed. Frank Sennett
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review
'A blistering portrait of contemporary Japan, its nihilism and decadence wrapped up within one of the most savage thrillers since THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS.' Kirkus Review 'Deft and fascinating a grisly tour of the darkness and confusion of the human mind.' The New York Times 'In the Miso Soup is quality pulp made out of Japan's crushed, dark heart: our pride, it suggests, is matched only by our self-hatred In the Miso Soup often reads like a collaboration between Stephen King and Michel Houellebecq, with off-key karaoke going on in the background. He gives you shocking blood-violence, but the social critique is never far behind.' LA Weekly 'His latest oozes darkness and ambiguity and reads like a cross-Pacific bullet train.' Entertainment Weekly --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Murakami has won some nice press for his unflinching look at violence and the underbelly of modern Japan; there's no doubt that it's deserved. His latest oozes darkness and ambiguity and reads like a cross-Pacific bullet train." -Entertainment Weekly
" . . .It is a testament to the strengths of Ryu Murakami's novel that it is ultimately defined not by its explicit depictions of violence and sex but instead by its misfit characters. In this skillful translation by Ralph McCarthy, Kenji is an appealing narrator, observant without being judgmental and nervous without being melodramatic; even the intensely creepy Frank is not entirely unsympathetic . . . Murakami deftly drops into this slim book both fascinating sociological details about the sex industry and often moving philosophical arguments about the forces that shape individual and national identity." -New York Times Book Review
"In this stark story by the iconoclastic Japanese filmmaker and novelist, originally published in Japan in 1997, a psychotic American sex tourist hires a young man top shepherd him through Tokyo's seedier side. Surrounded by the brute sexual violence and urban intrigue, the unlikely pair inhabits an eerie world between Asian noir and Pulp Fiction." -Details magazine
"In the Miso Soup is by turns comic and shocking-and then, all at once, both-but it is always memorable, and offers a window onto a world few Americans will ever see." -Pages magazine
"Murakami exposes the myth behind the exoticism of sex tourism...the 'Great Omiai Pub Massacre' reads like pure Miike [the film Audition] mania . . .perhaps will play well on the big screen one day."
-VLS, The Village Voice
"Ryu Murakami's In the Miso Soup, just released in English translation, presents a postmodern movement in a doomed tango between cultures that simultaneously attract and repel each other . . . Since his debut novel Almost Transparent Blue, brimming with sex and drugs near a US military base, won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1976, Murakami has balanced on the cutting edge of Japanese popular culture. His resume includes rock drumming, political and economic commentary and a stint as a talk-show host, but it is his novels and cult films that shock audiences." -Asia Times Online (www.atimes.com)
"A blistering portrait of contemporary Japan, its nihilism and decadence wrapped up within one of the most savage thrillers since The Silence of the Lambs. Shocking but gripping." -Kirkus Reviews
"A wicked meditation on the worst traits of American and Japanese society, this is a creepy culture clash indeed." -Booklist
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.