Winner of the 2012 Haruhiko Oyabu Award
What if everything you thought you knew about your family was a lie?
A young man makes a shocking discovery while visiting his parents’ home. Along with a purse and a lock of hair that may have belonged to his recently-deceased mother, Ryosuke finds four journals with notes that seem to be the confessions of a murderer. Now, he has to figure out what’s fact, what’s fiction...and who are these people he’s called “Mom” and “Dad.”
Available for the first time in English, Nan-Core is an unsettling, unrelentingly suspenseful tale from one of Japan’s most intriguing novelists.
MAHOKARU NUMATA was born in 1948 in Osaka, Japan, the daughter of a Buddhist priest. She married a priest, but later divorced and took holy orders herself. She went on to run her own construction consulting firm before making her literary debut in 2004 with the prize-winning novel If September Could Last Forever. Known for weaving strong threads of sexuality and violence into her stories, she is also recognized for her insightful explorations of such universal themes as love and hate, light and darkness, and the mysteries of human nature.
