When I finished Transparent Labyrinth I thought it should have been a longer book. Don’t get me wrong; this is good as it is, but I wanted to read more about Okada and Misa. This book is not for everyone, for sure. But if you can read the first few pages of it, you are good to go.
Okada is in Budapest for work. He travels around the city all alone, but one night he meets Misa in a restaurant. Misa is with her friends, but she ignores them when she meets Okada. Apparently, Misa is travelling through Europe on her own, and in Budapest, she is staying with Federica, her lesbian lover/patron/sponsor.
They go to a strange party together, and in the end, something terrible happens that will bound Misa and Okada forever. However, the book starts right there. If you are looking for a dreamlike, weird story, you’ll enjoy this one. Enjoy!
Transparent Labyrinth
Okada is on a business trip to Budapest when he meets enigmatic Misa and her Italian girlfriend, Federica. Inexplicably drawn to Misa, he agrees to accompany the couple to a lavish party in Pest. On arrival, Federica ominously disappears, and Misa and Okada find themselves locked in a penthouse room with ten other guests. They are promised that they will be freed at dawn, providing that they follow the commands given to them by five spectators…
A modern tale of memory, sexual tension and kink, Hirano’s short story runs through the labyrinth it constructs, the narrative twisting, forking, hiding its secrets just around the corner.
Keiichiro Hirano
Keiichirō Hirano is a Japanese novelist. Hirano was born in Gamagori, Aichi prefecture, Japan. He published his first novel (Nisshoku, 日蝕) in 1998 and won the Akutagawa Prize the next year as one of the youngest winners ever (at 23 years of age). He graduated from the Law Department of Kyoto University in 1999. In 2005 he was nominated as a cultural ambassador and spent a year in France.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
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