ドグラマグラ（上）

Dogura Magura #1

by Kyūsaku Yumeno, 夢野 久作

昭和十年一月、書下し自費出版。狂人の書いた推理小説という異常な状況設定の中に著者の思想、知識を集大成する。“日本一幻魔怪奇の本格探偵小説”とうたわれた、歴史的一大奇書。

Genres: Fiction, Japanese Literature, Novels, Mystery

324 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1976

About the author

Yumeno Kyūsaku (native name: 夢野 久作) was the pen name of the early Shōwa period Japanese author Sugiyama Yasumichi. The pen name literally means "a person who always dreams." He wrote detective novels and is known for his avant-gardism and his surrealistic, wildly imaginative and fantastic, even bizarre narratives.

Kyūsaku’s first success was a nursery tale Shiraga Kozō (White Hair Boy, 1922), which was largely ignored by the public. It was not until his first novella, Ayakashi no Tsuzumi (Apparitional Hand Drum, 1924) in the literary magazine Shinseinen that his name became known.

His subsequent works include Binzume jigoku (Hell in the Bottles, 1928), Kori no hate (End of the Ice, 1933) and his most significant novel Dogra Magra (ドグラマグラ, 1935), which is considered a precursor of modern Japanese science fiction and was adapted for a 1988 movie.

Kyūsaku died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1936 while talking with a visitor at home.

Reviews

[Vel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I may revise my take on this book after I finish the second volume but this was fun. A bit tiring and long-winded in some parts but I'm really looking forward to seeing where the plot will go after all of the pseudoscientific lectures from this first half.

[Rachel W]

This is the most dense and easily hardest book I’ve read in Japanese so far. Definitely taking a break before I tackle 下 and I’ll reserve overall judgment for when I finish the whole thing, but so far I like the nested papers structure… but hate the nested papers content haha.