Strangers

Description:
Middle-aged, jaded and divorced, TV scriptwriter Harada is forced to set up home in his office, situated in a high-rise apartment block overlooking Tokyo's busy Route 8. One night, nostalgic for his lost childhood, he decides to visit the entertainment district of Asakusa, the city's dilapidated old downtown area, and there, at the theatre, he meets a man who looks exactly like his long-dead father. So begins Harada's ordeal, as he's thrust into a reality where his parents appear to be alive at the exact age they had been when they died so many years before. Although they may be apparitions, he takes solace in seeing them, in spite of the damage it seems to do to his health. Can Kei, the mysteriously fragile neighbour with whom Harada begins a tentative relationship, save him from the ghosts of his past?

Review:
''An eerie ghost story written with hypnotic clarity: quickly paced, intelligent and haunting with passages of acute psychological insight... Yamada is amongst the best Japanese writers I have read.' Bret Easton Ellis; 'Highly recommended... A cerebral and haunting ghost story - more a 'Whoizzit?' than a 'Whodunnit?' - which completely wrong-footed me.' David Mitchell'

Author Biography:
Taichi Yamada worked at the world-renowned Shochiku film studios until he set out on a highly successful career as a freelance scriptwriter and novelist. His English-language debut, Strangers, was awarded the Yamamoto Shugoro Prize for the best human interest novel in Japan.