Cult X

by Fuminori Nakamura Narrated by Brian Nishii

Overview

The magnum opus by Akutagawa Prize-winner Fuminori Nakamura, Cult X is a story that dives into the psychology of fringe religion, obsession, and social disaffection. When Toru Narazaki's girlfriend, Ryoko, disappears, he tries to track her down, despite the warnings of a private detective he's hired to find her. Ryoko's past is shrouded in mystery, but the one concrete clue to her whereabouts is a previous address where she lived: in a compound in the heart of Tokyo, with a group that seems to be a cult led by a charismatic guru with a revisionist Buddhist scheme of life, death, and society. Narazaki plunges into the secretive world of the cult, ready to expose himself to any of the guru's brainwashing tactics if it means he can learn the truth about Ryoko. But the cult isn't what he expected, and he has no idea of the bubbling violence beneath its surface. Inspired by the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, Cult X is an exploration of what draws individuals into extremism. This multi-faceted novel is nothing less than a tour de force, capturing the connections between astrophysics, neuroscience, and religion. It is an invective against predatory corporate consumerism and exploitative geopolitics, and it is a love story about compassion in the face of nihilism.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

03/26/2018
A man’s search for his missing girlfriend drives this gripping novel from Nakamura (The Boy in the Earth). After Ryoko Tachibina disappears from Toru Narazaki’s life after hinting that she is going to kill herself, he gets a lead on her potential whereabouts from a PI friend, who reports that she was a member of a mysterious religious organization in Tokyo—the kind “people didn’t hear many good things about.” When Toru goes to its headquarters, he’s told that, while Ryoko had been there, she was actually a member of a rival group—a “nameless cult,” labelled simply “X” by Japan’s Public Security Bureau. As Toru continues his quest for the truth about Ryoko’s loyalties, he learns more about X, which proves to pose a threat to the entire country. Though lengthy digressions in the form of transcribed lectures about faith and science demand some patience, and some readers may be uncomfortable with the explicit sex scenes, this noirish thriller will resonate with Ryu Murakami fans. (May)

From the Publisher

A Japanese Bestseller, with over 400,000 copies sold
A LitHub Most Anticipated Crime, Mystery, and Thriller Title of 2018
A Library Journal Best Book of 2018

Praise for Cult X

"You'll think about Nakamura's questions long after you've closed his book's covers. He uses the conventions of a genre to prop up a tent for big ideas about groupthink and individual responsibility. If you feel a few frissons along the way? Consider how easily you might be seduced into a cult, and then take a long, cold shower."
—NPR

"Raises the literary stakes to literally cosmic proportions . . . Cult X, translated into handsome, unadorned English by Kalau Almony, pushes the boundaries of the thriller genre to an extreme degree. Mr. Nakamura has written a daunting, challenging saga of good and evil on a Dostoevskian scale. Those who persevere to its finale may well feel the richer for it."
—Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal

"Nakamura's impassioned writing is part of a continuum that stretches from Dostoevsky to Camus to Ōe."
—Los Angeles Times

"Nakamura’s talent for characterization and willingness to engage make this a novel worth wrestling with."
—Los Angeles Review of Books

"One of the most buzzed about novels of the season."
—Salon

"The Fuminori Nakamura novel we’ve been waiting for . . . [Nakamura's] talent has always been for exploring the lives of those on the fringes of society, the damaged and the ostracized, and that remains at the heart of this work."
—The Japan Times

"Taking as his inspiration the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, award-winning author Nakamura weaves together politics, religion, and science—including biology, cosmology, and quantum physics—into a fascinating noir brimming with insightful commentary on totalitarianism that is especially apt for our times."
—Booklist, Starred Review

"Gripping . . . This noirish thriller will resonate with Ryu Murakami fans."
—Publishers Weekly

"At its heart [Cult X] is an investigation—first for a lost woman, but ultimately into humanity's darkest motivations and the temptation to follow them." 
—The Sunday Times

“Cult X was inspired by Aum Shinrikyo, the group responsible for the 1995 sarin attack in the Tokyo subway, but that is just a starting point, for Nakamura weaves in themes of personal commitment, politics, religion and much more. It’s not, however, for the faint of heart.”
—BookPage

"A magnificently unsettling work."
—Words Without Borders

"[Cult X] twists adeptly toward a horror-laden plot of mass destruction . . . Horrifying, yes—but worth confronting." 
—Kingdom Books

"The sprawling novel, told from multiple perspectives and with long forays into the science of the universe, is an epic endeavor that deserves to stand next to the works of Ellroy and Bolaño in the canon of lengthy crime fiction."
—CrimeReads

Praise for Fuminori Nakamura

Japan Objects' Best Japanese Authors of All Time

“Crime fiction that pushes past the bounds of genre, occupying its own nightmare realm . . . Guilt or innocence is not the issue; we are corrupted, complicit, just by living in society.”
—Los Angeles Times

“A suspenseful study of obsession . . . Love, even illicit love, has a way of bringing out the best or the worst in a person.”
—The New York Times

“Few protagonists in modern crime fiction are as alienated as those in the challenging, violent, grotesque tales of Japanese author Fuminori Nakamura.”
—The Wall Street Journal

“This slim, icy, outstanding thriller, reminiscent of Muriel Spark and Patricia Highsmith, should establish Fuminori Nakamura as one of the most interesting Japanese crime novelists at work today.”
—USA Today

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170911769
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	05/22/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

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Excerpted from "Cult X"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Fuminori Nakamura.
Excerpted by permission of Soho Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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