From the original Japanese— an exquisite novel by Malcolm Bradbury’s literary seminar graduate, Booker Prize winner for “The Remains of the Day”— a paradoxical blend of the traditions of 1930s “black detective” fiction and the “cultural-prose” of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
The well-known detective intellectual Christopher Banks has dreamed since childhood of uncovering the mystery of his parents’ disappearance—and now, in a very uneasy time, he finally gets the chance. He sets off along the London–Shanghai route. But Christopher’s investigation and his exotic journey gradually turn into a passage from the Present to the Past, from a world of illusions into a world of harsh reality.