Ring
By (Author) Koji Suzuki
Translated by Robert B. Rohmer
Translated by Glynne Walley
HarperCollins Publishers
HarperCollins
5th July 2007
4th October 2010
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
Adventure / action fiction
Modern and contemporary fiction: general and literary
895.635
Paperback
400
Width 129mm, Height 198mm, Spine 28mm
271g
Stunning Japanese thriller with a chilling supernatural twist. The novel that inspired the cult Japanese movie and the Hollywood blockbuster of the same name.
Asakawa is a hardworking journalist who has climbed his way up from local-news beat reporter to writer for his newspapers weekly magazine. A chronic workaholic, he doesnt take much notice when his seventeen-year-old niece dies suddenly until a chance conversation reveals that another healthy teenager died at exactly the same time, in chillingly similar circumstances.
Sensing a story, Asakawa begins to investigate, and soon discovers that this strange simultaneous sudden-death syndrome also affected another two teenagers. Exactly one week before their mysterious deaths the four teenagers all spent the night at a leisure resort in the same log cabin.
When Asakawa visits the resort, the mystery only deepens. A comment made in the guest book by one of the teenagers leads him to a particular vidoetape with a portentous message at the end:
Those who have viewed these images are fated to die at this exact hour one week from now.
Asakawa finds himself in a race against time he has only seven days to find the cause of the teenagers deaths before it finds him. The hunt puts him on the trail of an apocalytpic power that will force Asakawa to choose between saving his family and saving civilization.
'The pace doesn't slacken for a moment ! a guaranteed page-turner' Observer 'Suzuki builds tension brilliantly' Guardian 'Bristles with menace and fear' Uncut 'The translation is wonderful, the spare and sleek prose making for an easy read, while the dark currents of the story build up to a mind-boggling climax' Outland
Koji Suzuki is a literary star in his native Japan, where Ring has sold 2.8 million copies to date. Ring is the first book in a hugely successful trilogy that continues with Spiral and Loop (both of which have film deals). Koji Suzuki lives in Tokyo.