> Skip to content
  • Published: 2 August 2018
  • ISBN: 9781448103874
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 480

Grotesque




An unconvential and unique crime thriller with an outrageous, unattractive, anarchic narrator showing a new darker side to the lives of women in Japan.

Two prostitutes are murdered in Tokyo.

Twenty years previously both women were educated at the same elite school for young ladies, and had seemingly promising futures ahead of them.

But in a world of dark desire and vicious ambition, for both women, prostitution meant power. Grotesque is a masterful and haunting thriller, a chilling exploration of women's secret lives in modern day Japan.

  • Published: 2 August 2018
  • ISBN: 9781448103874
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 480

About the author

Natsuo Kirino

Natsuo Kirino, born in 1951, quickly established a reputation in Japan as one of a rare breed of crime writer whose work goes well beyond the conventional crime novel. This fact has been demonstrated by her winning not only Japan's top mystery award, for Out, but two of its major literary awards, the Naoki Prize and the Tanizaki Prize. Her novels available in English are Out, Grotesque, Real World and In.

Also by Natsuo Kirino

See all

Praise for Grotesque

Delves so deep beyond its own shock horror premise that much contemporary crime fiction looks like cheap, exploitative rubbish by comparison ....an utterly absorbing novel that gives as vivid - and disturbing - a picture of contemporary Japan as you could imagine

Metro

It is one of the most unexpected and playful novels to emerge from Japan in recent years...a triumph. In its boldness and originality, it broadens our sense of what modern Japanese fiction can be

Telegraph

Suicide, paedophilia, incest and murder combine with subtle touches of humour to form a story that will leave you questioning your own morality

Dazed and Confused

This is a rich, complex read. Be prepared for a book utterly unlike anything we are used to in crime fiction

Independent

Unclichéd contemporary noir at its most absorbing and relevant...a masterful and haunting achievement

Tangledweb.co.uk