Kokuhaku 告白 (Confessions) is the literary debut of Kanae Minato, one of Japan’s most widely read contemporary writers. Published in 2008, it took the bestseller lists and the Hon’ya Taishō (Booksellers Award) by storm, and brough Minato the title of “the queen of iyamisu”, a genre on the borderline of a thriller and a psychological novel. In iyamisu, the darkest corners of the human psyche are exposed to the light of day, and the reader is unable to put the novel down.
Kokuhaku begins when a middle school teacher takes cold-blooded revenge on the murderers of her four-year-old daughter… who are students from her own class. Minato, in her particular style, changes narrators, telling one story from many points of view, with each confession providing us with new clues – who killed? And why?
Kanae Minato’s novels are ready-made materials for movie scripts (the author herself began her writing career with those) and usually you don’t have to wait long for a film adaptation. Kokuhaku was brought to cinema screens by Tetsuya Nakashima in 2010 – the film “Confessions” caused a sensation all over the world, it was also the Japanese candidate for the Oscar. But it wasn’t until four years later that the English translation by Stephan Snyder was published.
The book also includes an afterword interview with Nakashima about working on the movie set.
The book is also available in English.
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