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Cannibals

Cannibals

Shinya Tanaka (translated by Kalau Almony)

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Publication info

  • Designed by Jun Kawana
  • 88 pages
  • Published
  • 9781915829092 (pb) / 9781915829108 (e)

Author | Translator

Award-winning author SHINYA TANAKA debuted with Tsumetai Mizu no Hitsuji (2005), recipient of the Shincho New Writers Award. Tanaka then became the youngest author to win the Kawabata Yasunari Award with Sanagi (2007). In 2008, Kireta Kusari, his collection of stories including Sanagi, was the winner of the Mishima Yukio Award. Finally, Tanaka received the Akutagawa Award for Cannibals (2011), which became the basis of the eponymous film in 2013, directed by Shinji Aoyama. Other significant works include Moeru Ie (2013),Prime Minister A (2014),Chi ni Hau Mono no Kiroku (2020), and Nagareru Shima to Umi no Kaibutsu (2023).

KALAU ALMONY is a literary translator based in Kawasaki, Japan. Born and raised in Kailua, Hawaii, he completed his BA in Comparative Literature at Brown University and MA in East Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. His translations include the work of Fuminori Nakamura, Tahi Saihate, and Nao-Cola Yamazaki.

During the hot, dry summer of 1988, in a forgotten neighborhood known as the riverside, seventeen-year-old Shinogaki Toma is entangled in a desperate struggle against what he believes to be his fate to become his sadistic father. Consumed by a fear that he will harm his girlfriend, Toma’s downward spiral into depression and instability becomes increasingly intense. Toma’s mother left his father long ago and now lives nearby as a fishmonger. Using the hook that replaced the hand she lost during wartime bombings, she guts the eels Toma catches in the sewage-filled river for his father to eat. Things come to a head when Kotoko, his father’s live in girlfriend, becomes pregnant and makes the decision to leave the riverside for a better life.

Translated from Japanese by Kalau Almony, Tanaka Shinya’s Akutagawa Prize-winning masterpiece, Cannibals, sold over 200,000 copies in Japan and was adapted into a movie by Cannes Film Festival-winner Shinji Aoyama.

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