Death Sentences

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Synopsis
Japan, 1980s: A special police squad is tracking down one of the &“afflicted&” to recover the &“stuff.&” Although the operation seems like a drug bust, the &“stuff&” is actually some kind of text. Death Sentences—a work of science fiction that shares its conceit with the major motion picture The Ring—tells the story of a mysterious surrealist poem, penned in the 1940s, which, through low-tech circulation across time, kills its readers, including Arshile Gorky and Antonin Artaud, before sparking a wave of suicides after its publication in 1980s Japan. Mixing elements of Japanese hard-boiled detective story, horror, and science fiction, the novel ranges across time and space, from the Left Bank of Paris to the planet Mars. Paris, 1948: André Breton anxiously awaits a young poet, Who May. He recalls their earlier encounter in New York City and the mysterious effects of reading Who May&’s poem &“Other World.&” Upon meeting, Who May gives Breton another poem, &“Mirror,&” an even more unsettling work. Breton shares it with his fellow surrealists. Before Breton can discuss the poem with him, Who May vanishes. Who May contacts Breton about a third poem, &“The Gold of Time,&” and then slips into a coma and dies (or enters another dimension). Copies of the poem are mailed to all of Who May&’s friends—Breton, Gorky, Paul Éluard, Marcel Duchamp, and other famous surrealists and dadaists. Thus begins the &“magic poem plague.&”Death Sentences is the first novel by the popular and critically acclaimed science fiction author Kawamata Chiaki to be published in English. Released in Japan in 1984 as Genshi-gari (Hunting the magic poems), Death Sentences was a best seller and won the Japan Science Fiction Grand Prize. With echoes of such classic sci-fi works as George Orwell&’s 1984, Ray Bradbury&’s Fahrenheit 451, William Gibson&’s Neuromancer, and Philip K. Dick&’s Martian Time-Slip, Death Sentences is a fascinating mind-bender with a style all its own.
Copyright:
1984

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
ISBN-13:
9781452938745
Related ISBNs:
9780816654550
Publisher:
University of Minnesota Press
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
Kawamata Chiaki.
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
Horror, Literature and Fiction, Mystery and Thrillers, Science Fiction and Fantasy
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.
Translator:
Thomas Lamarre
Translator:
Kazuko Y. Behrens

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