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Izumi Suzuki - Terminal Boredom (Stories) (2nd Hand Softback)
ISBN / GTIN-13 : 9781788739887
Synopsis
The first English language publication of the work of Izumi Suzuki, a legend of Japanese science fiction and a countercultural icon.
7 punky & pitch black stories . . .
On a planet where men are contained in ghettoised isolation, women enjoy the fruits of a queer matriarchal utopia - until a boy escapes and a young woman's perception of the world is violently interrupted. Two old friends enjoy cocktails on a holiday resort planet where all is not as it seems. A bickering couple emigrate to a world that has worked out an innovative way to side-step the need for war, only to bring their quarrels (and something far more destructive) with them. And in the title story, Suzuki offers readers a tragic and warped mirroring of her own final days as the tyranny of enforced screen-time and the mechanisation of labour bring about a shattering psychic collapse.
At turns nonchalantly hip and charmingly deranged, Suzuki's singular slant on speculative fiction would be echoed in countless later works, from Margaret Atwood and Harumi Murakami, to Black Mirror and Ex Machina. In these darkly playful and punky stories, the fantastical elements are always earthed by the universal pettiness of strife between the sexes, and the gritty reality of life on the lower rungs, whatever planet that ladder might be on.
Details
- Format : Standard 2nd Hand Softback with French Fold Sleeves
- Condition : Very Good (Almost As New)
- Category : Fiction - Short Stories & Anthologies
- Published : 2021 (Verso)
- ISBN : 9781788739887
- SKU : B003253
- PPC : LL300gm
- RRP : £10.99
- Quantity Available : 1 only.
External Reviews
"The truths, beauty and strangeness Suzuki gave the world throughout her career are hard-fought, rewarding, and demanding." - Josh Wilson, The Fabulist.
"Startlingly prescient . . . Part of what makes Suzuki’s storytelling so engrossing is her ability to depict existential boredom and grim, sometimes terrifying, futures without falling into fatalism." - Julia Shiota, The Ploughshares Blog.
"No matter how strange the fictional worlds of the future she manufactures, her reader would find something deeply familiar in the simple conversations of her characters." - Xiaochen Su, The News Lens.
"A welcome glimpse inside the mind of a writer whose talent has been overlooked for far too long." - All the Anime.
"Weird and wonderful, unique and unsettling . . . You won't put this one down." - Osusume Books.
"Eagerly awaited. Terminal Boredom transports readers to worlds both familiar and unfamiliar, indulging our fantasies and fears of the future. Dark and slightly absurdist, this collection is a poignant rumination on the despair and isolation of modern society." - Kirkus Reviews.
"The latest inclusion in the modern canon of Japanese women authors' surreal feminist work, Terminal Boredom puts a distinctly sci-fi spin on the concept." - Thrillist (30 Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2021).
"Terminal Boredom plays with tech, gender, and tradition in marvellous ways. Highly recommended." - Patrick Rapa, Philadelphia Inquirer.
"There’s nothing boring about the short stories in Terminal Boredom." - The A.V. Club (5 new books to read in April).
"Suzuki’s work, now released in English for the first time, marks an exciting moment. Its themes feel of-the-moment despite being written over thirty years ago, and yet they are also surreal - the imagined artificialities of the 1980s written as futuristic now mirror our mundane, modern technology." - Makenna Goodman, Electric Literature.
"The themes of Suzuki's fiction thrum with a resistant, brightly grim tension. Passing decades certainly haven’t dulled the razor’s cut of her punk sensibilities." - Lee Mandelo.
"A vital addition to the science fiction canon in the anglophone world . . . If there is any proof needed that the future has ended, it is that these stories can speak to us so directly across the four decades since their writing." - Calum Barnes, The Quietus.
"Dazzling . . . her stories are characterised by the elegance with which they pierce the well-ordered surface of modern life to uncover the corrosion at its heart." - Andy Hedgecock, Morning Star.
"Personally, these stories struck me. It crosses genres. This is a wonderful book. I would have loved to have read more of Izumi Suzuki’s writing. I understand that this was her first book. Capturing the lostness or mental confusion or apathy of our lives driven by an innate need for more without being able to understand what the “more” is. You can sense at times the lostness of trying to understand our humanness as compared to what society may expect it should be for the individual (the you). Very compelling but simple prose. The translators appear to have done an excellent job." - Amazon Review.
"At last, we have access to some of Suzuki's most exciting works." - Books & Bao.
The Author
Izumi Suzuki was born in 1949. After dropping out of high school she worked in a factory before finding success and infamy as a model and actress. Her acting credits include several classics of 1970s Japanese cinema, as well as softcore pornography. When the father of her children, the jazz musican Kaoru Abe, died of an overdose, Suzuki's creative output went into overdrive and she began producing the irreverent, punky short fiction, novels and essays that ensured her reputation would outstrip and outlast that of the men she'd been associated with in her early life. She took her own life in 1986, leaving behind a decade's worth of groundbreaking and influential writing.
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