Piercing: A Novel

“Mr. Murakami’s novels are filled with entertaining psychopaths.”—The New York Times

A pulsating cult-favorite psycho-thriller, the basis of the major motion picture starring Christopher Abbott and Mia Wasikowska

*One of Literary Hub's “Ten Works of Literary Horror You Should Read (Even if You Don't Think You Like Horror)”*

Kawashima Masayuki is a successful graphic designer living in Tokyo with his loving wife, Yoko, and their baby girl. Outwardly, their lives are a picture of happiness and contentment, but every night while his wife sleeps Kawashima creeds from him bed and watches over the baby’s crib with an ice pick in his hand and an almost visceral desire to use it.

One night, as this struggle unfolds once more, Kawashima makes a decision to confront his demons and sets into motion an uncontrollable chain of events seeming to lead inexorably to murder. The follow-up to In the Miso Soup from a cult favorite writer, Piercing confirms Murakami as the master of the psycho thriller—terrifying, sickening, and utterly gripping.

Ryu Murakami was born in 1952 in Nagasaki prefecture, Ryu Murakamiis the enfant terrible of contemporary Japanese literature. Awarded the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1976 for his first book, a novel about a group of young people drowned in sex and drugs, he has gone on to explore with cinematic intensity the themes of violence and technology in contemporary Japanese society. His novels include Coin Locker Babies, Sixty-Nine, Popular Hits of the Showa Era, Audition, In the Miso Soup and From the Fatherland, with Love. Murakami is also a screenwriter and a director; his films include Tokyo Decadence, Audition and Because of You.

Ralph McCarthy is a noted translator, whose translations include Ryu Murakami’s Audition, In the Miso Soup, Piercing, Sixty-Nine, and From The Fatherland, With Love.