ドグラ・マグラ（上）

Dogura Magura #1

by Kyūsaku Yumeno

昭和10年１月、書き下ろし作品として松柏館書店から自費出版された。〈日本一幻魔怪奇の本格探偵小説〉〈日本探偵小説界の最高峰〉〈幻怪、妖麗、グロテスク、エロテイシズムの極〉という宣伝文句は、読書界の大きな話題を呼んだ。常人では考えられぬ余りに奇抜な内容のため、毀誉褒貶が相半ばしている。〈これを書くために生きてきた〉と著者みずから語り、十余年の歳月をかけて完成された内容は、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。

Genres: Fiction, Japanese Literature, Novels, Mystery

308 pages, Kindle Edition

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.