*THE JAPANESE CRIME CLASSIC – ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD*<\/b><\/u><\/p>\n
‘One of the great masterpieces of Japanese crime fiction and one of the must-read books of this or any year’ David Peace<\/b><\/font><\/b><\/p>\n Tokyo, 1995. <\/b>Five men meet at the racetrack every Sunday to bet on horses. They have little in common except a deep disaffection with their lives, but together they represent the social struggles and griefs of post-War Japan: a poorly socialized genius stuck working as a welder; a demoted detective with a chip on his shoulder; a Zainichi Korean banker sick of being ostracized for his ethnicity; a struggling single dad of a teenage girl with Down syndrome. The fifth man bringing them all together is an elderly drugstore owner grieving his grandson, who died in suspicious circumstances.<\/p>\n Intent on revenge against a society that values corporate behemoths more than human life, the five conspirators decide to carry out a heist: kidnap the CEO of Japan’s largest beer conglomerate and extract blood money from the company’s corrupt financiers.<\/p>\n Inspired by the unsolved true-crime kidnapping case perpetrated by “the Monster with 21 Faces,” Lady Joker<\/i> has become a cultural touchstone since its 1997 publication, acknowledged as the magnum opus by one of Japan’s literary masters.<\/p>\n ‘A novel that portrays with devastating immensity how those on the dark fringes of society can be consumed by the darkness of their own hearts’ <\/b>Yoko Ogawa, author of The Memory Police<\/i><\/p>\n ‘Takamura’s prismatic heist novel offers a broad indictment of capitalist society’<\/b> New York Times<\/i><\/p>\n ‘Lady Joker<\/i> is a work you get immersed in, like a sprawling 19th century novel or a TV series like The Wir<\/i>e’ <\/b>NPR<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tokyo, 1995. Five men meet at the racetrack with little in common except a deep disaffection with their lives, but together they represent the social struggles and griefs of post-War Japan: a poorly socialized genius stuck working as a welder; a demoted detective with a chip on his shoulder; a Zainichi Korean banker sick of being ostracized for his race; a single dad of a teenage girl with Down syndrome. The fifth man bringing them all together is an elderly drugstore owner grieving his grandson, who died suspiciously after the revelation of a family connection with the segregated buraku community, historically subjected to severe discrimination. Intent on revenge against a society that values corporate behemoths more than human life, the five decide to carry out a heist: kidnap the CEO of Japan’s largest beer conglomerate and extract blood money from the company’s corrupt financiers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[406],"product_tag":[851,393,207],"class_list":["post-95642","product","type-product","status-publish","product_cat-crime-thrillers","product_tag-classic-crime","product_tag-classic-fiction-pre-c-1945","product_tag-thriller-suspense","pa_book_author-takamura-kaoru","pa_cover-paperback","pa_dewey-895-636-edition23","pa_edition-1st-paperback-ed","pa_imprint-baskerville","pa_language-english","pa_pages-12770","pa_publisher-baskerville","pa_readership-general-trade-code-k","first","instock","taxable","shipping-taxable","purchasable","product-type-simple"],"yoast_head":"\n