부드러운 볼

by Natsuo Kirino, 기리노 나쓰오, 권남희 (Translator)

일본 최고의 미스터리 작가로 손꼽히는 기리노 나쓰오의 나오키 상 수상작 <부드러운 볼>. <아웃>과 함께 기리노 나쓰오의 대표작으로 손꼽히는 작품으로써, 표현상으로는 하드보일드, 무자비함을 특징으로 하는 기리노 나쓰오의 문체가 완성을 이룬 작품이다. 불륜, 범죄를 매개로 한 인생 전락과 파멸의 이야기이다. 그러나 그 이면에서 진정한 삶의 본질을 묻는다.

애인과 격정의 밤을 보내며 이 사람과 함께라면 아이들을 버려도 좋다고 생각한 다음 날, 다섯 살짜리 딸이 실종되었다. 모리와키 카스미가 고향 홋카이도를 버리고 도쿄로 온 지 15년, 애인과 밀회를 즐기기 위해 다시 찾은 그곳에서 딸 유카를 잃은 것이다. 카스미는 불륜의 달콤함에 빠져 딸을 버렸다는 죄책감으로 유카의 생존 가능성에 집착한다. 4년이 지나고, 모든 이가 포기한 후에도 홀로 딸의 행방을 찾던 카스미 앞에 위암으로 반년 시한부 인생을 선고받은 전직 형사 우쓰미가 나타난다.

Genres: Japan

551 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2004

About the author

NATSUO KIRINO (桐野夏生), born in 1951 in Kanazawa (Ishikawa Prefecture) was an active and spirited child brought up between her two brothers, one being six years older and the other five years younger than her. Kirino's father, being an architect, took the family to many cities, and Kirino spent her youth in Sendai, Sapporo, and finally settled in Tokyo when she was fourteen, which is where she has been residing since. Kirino showed glimpses of her talent as a writer in her early stages—she was a child with great deal of curiosity, and also a child who could completely immerse herself in her own unique world of imagination.

After completing her law degree, Kirino worked in various fields before becoming a fictional writer; including scheduling and organizing films to be shown in a movie theater, and working as an editor and writer for a magazine publication. She got married to her present husband when she turned twenty-four, and began writing professionally, after giving birth to her daughter, at age thirty. However, it was not until Kirino was forty-one that she made her major debut. Since then, she has written thirteen full-length novels and three volumes of collective short stories, which are highly acclaimed for her intriguingly intelligent plot development and character portrayal, and her unique perspective of Japanese society after the collapse of the economic bubble.

Today, Kirino continues to enthusiastically write in a range of interesting genres. Her smash hit novel OUT (Kodansha, 1997) became the first work to be translated into English and other languages. OUT was also nominated for the 2004 MWA Edgar Allan Poe Award in the Best Novel Category, which made Kirino the first Japanese writer to be nominated for this major literary award. Her other works are now under way to be translated and published around the world.