From Publishers Weekly
In this less than stellar first novel from the author of Ring, a mystical red reindeer symbol loosely links three pairs of star-crossed lovers as the three-part story meanders across many centuries. The novel's first part, "Legend," chronicles the fate of the lovely Fayau and her husband, Bogud, who's left bereft on the prehistoric Mongolian steppes when invaders kidnap his wife and child. In "Paradise," set on a South Pacific island in the 18th century, the European sailor Jones falls for the sensuous native, Laia. "Dessert" leaps forward to 1990s New York City and the arid southwestern U.S., where the editor Flora Aideen follows the classical music composer Leslie Mardoff for a photo essay, and in hopes of helping him to create a masterpiece. Suzuki fans who have been waiting for this first English translation may be disappointed by its stilted language and contrived plot.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
The first book by the author of the oft-adapted international horror hit Ring (2003) is a millennia-spanning saga-cum-romance based on the Bering "land-bridge" theory of prehistoric migration from Siberia to North America. The book's first part, "Legend," traces the paths of separated lovers whose emblems of leaping red deer mark their trails. "Paradise" leaps to the eighteenth century and an English sailor shipwrecked on a South Pacific island who falls in love with a native girl descended from one of the ancient lovers; she sees a godhead in the same deer image. In the late twentieth century in "The Desert," a composer said to be "a Casanova with Indian blood"--a further descendant from the prehistoric lover who crossed the land-bridge--undertakes a mystical journey below the Arizona sands. Suzuki won the Japan Fantasy Novel Award for this book and went on to international fame for ostensibly creating a new kind of antigore horror with the successfully filmed (in Japanese and American versions) and manga-adapted Ring, whose fans, in particular, may go for Paradise.Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
Praise from PETER STRAUB, author of In the Night Room
“This first novel by Koji Suzuki, who went on to reinvent contemporary horror in the classic Ring trilogy, gleams with imaginative power. A love story refracted through time, Paradise pretty much made time disappear while I read it–one whole Saturday flew past. What a pleasure, and what a wonderful writer.”
“This first novel by Koji Suzuki, who went on to reinvent contemporary horror in the classic Ring trilogy, gleams with imaginative power. A love story refracted through time, Paradise pretty much made time disappear while I read it–one whole Saturday flew past. What a pleasure, and what a wonderful writer.”
Book Description
What if your soul mate isn’t encountered once in a lifetime but once in millennia?
From the unique imagination of the author of the Ring trilogy, which inspired blockbuster films on both sides of the Pacific, comes an unconventional love story that finds the Japanese master delivering a pure page-turner outside the horror genre. Comprising three distinct parts each of which is a tale of adventure, Paradise demonstrates that the sinister poet of humidity who made use of wetness to raise chills in Dark Water is just as much in his element plotting adrenalin-fueled searches across the desert.
In the arid badlands of prehistoric Asia, a lovelorn youth violates a sacred tribal taboo against representing human figures by etching an image of his beloved. When the foretold punishment comes to pass, the two must embark on a journey across the world, and time itself, to try to reclaim their destiny. A mysterious spirit guides them towards a surprise destination that readers may indeed find quite close to home.
Published a year before Ring, Paradise was Koji Suzuki’s groundbreaking first novel that launched his career as a fiction writer. Winner of the Japan Fantasy Award, it was immediately made into an animated TV series. Filled with exotic locales, betrayal, action, romance, and ideas, Paradise should delight fans of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas as well as devotees of the non-horror fare of Stephen King, to whom Suzuki is frequently compared.
From the unique imagination of the author of the Ring trilogy, which inspired blockbuster films on both sides of the Pacific, comes an unconventional love story that finds the Japanese master delivering a pure page-turner outside the horror genre. Comprising three distinct parts each of which is a tale of adventure, Paradise demonstrates that the sinister poet of humidity who made use of wetness to raise chills in Dark Water is just as much in his element plotting adrenalin-fueled searches across the desert.
In the arid badlands of prehistoric Asia, a lovelorn youth violates a sacred tribal taboo against representing human figures by etching an image of his beloved. When the foretold punishment comes to pass, the two must embark on a journey across the world, and time itself, to try to reclaim their destiny. A mysterious spirit guides them towards a surprise destination that readers may indeed find quite close to home.
Published a year before Ring, Paradise was Koji Suzuki’s groundbreaking first novel that launched his career as a fiction writer. Winner of the Japan Fantasy Award, it was immediately made into an animated TV series. Filled with exotic locales, betrayal, action, romance, and ideas, Paradise should delight fans of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas as well as devotees of the non-horror fare of Stephen King, to whom Suzuki is frequently compared.
About the Author
Koji Suzuki was born in 1957 in Hamamastu, southwest of Tokyo. He attended Keio University where he majored in French. After graduating he held numerous odd jobs, including a stint as a cram school teacher. Also a self-described jock, he holds a first-class yachting license and crossed the U.S., from Key West to Los Angeles, on his motorcycle.
The father of two daughters, Suzuki is a respected authority on childrearing and has written numerous works on the subject. He acquired his expertise when he was a struggling writer and househusband. Suzuki also has translated a children’s book into Japanese, The Little Sod Diaries by the crime novelist Simon Brett.
Paradise is Suzuki’s fifth novel to appear in English. His current work in progress is Edge City, a novel of quantum horror. He is based in Tokyo but loves to travel, often in the United States.
The father of two daughters, Suzuki is a respected authority on childrearing and has written numerous works on the subject. He acquired his expertise when he was a struggling writer and househusband. Suzuki also has translated a children’s book into Japanese, The Little Sod Diaries by the crime novelist Simon Brett.
Paradise is Suzuki’s fifth novel to appear in English. His current work in progress is Edge City, a novel of quantum horror. He is based in Tokyo but loves to travel, often in the United States.
