The Rope Artist, Fuminori Nakamura
The Rope Artist, Fuminori Nakamura
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The Rope Artist

Author: Fuminori Nakamura, Sam Bett

Narrator: Kurt Kanazawa, Brian Nishii

Unabridged: 6 hr 15 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 05/02/2023


Synopsis

The aftermath of the murder of a bondage teacher reveals the darkest corners of the human mind in this chilling new mystery from the master of Japanese literary noir.

Two detectives. Two identical women. One dead body—then two, then three, then four. All knotted up in Japan’s underground BDSM scene and kinbaku, a form of rope bondage which bears a complex cultural history of spirituality, torture, cleansing, and sacrifice.

As Togashi, a junior member of the police force, investigates the murder of a kinbaku instructor, he finds himself unable to resist his own private transgressive desires. In contrast, Togashi’s Sherlock Holmesian colleague Hayama is morally upright to a fault, with a stalwart commitment to the truth and nearly

superhuman powers of deduction. When Hayama notices a dangerous measure of darkness within Togashi, he embarks on a parallel investigation, which soon spirals out of control.

Unflinching in its flayed-raw treatment of identity, violence, sexuality, power, the occult, and the divine, The Rope Artist is both viscerally painful and unexpectedly hopeful—a genre homage that shines a light on the most dangerous elements of the human psyche.

Author Bio

Fuminori Nakamura has won numerous prizes for his writing, including Japan’s prestigious Ōe Prize; the David L. Goodis Award for Noir Fiction; and the 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 Cult X, The Gun, The Kingdom, Evil and the Mask, The Boy in the Earth, My Annihilation, and Last Winter, We Parted. He was born in 1977 and graduated from Fukushima University in 2000.

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