Basis of the blockbuster video game
Parasite Eve
By Hideaki Sena
Translated by Tyran Grillo
Fiction/Medical Horror
Hardcover, 320 pages, 6.5 x 9.5 inches
978-1-932234-19-0 / 1-932234-19-5
U.S.$24.95 / CAN$31.95
Trade Paperback, 320 pages, 5.25 x 8 inches
978-1-932234-20-6
U.S.$13.95 / CAN$15.95
Eve is a parasitic mitochondria reproducing itself at alarming speed. Her goal? To take over human evolution. Two manifestations of Eve will work independently to a wild, scientific and absurdly sexual end. The one Eve in a lab is mutating into the form of a perfect woman, the other is growing inside the transplanted kidney of an unhappy teenage girl, waiting to be impregnated by her lab-sample counterpart. In her path are doctors whose fascination with Eve may ultimately lead to her victory.
It was Parasite Eve, along with Koji Suzuki’s Ring series, that began the J-Horror boom. A pageturner about the rebellion of mitochondria, it became the Japan Horror Novel Award’s first winner and the inspiration for a videogame that has sold close to a million copies throughout the world. In Japan, the film version of Parasite Eve was so popular that in one study, when asked what color they thought mitochondria were, most people responded, “green” (which is how they were represented in the film, but obviously not how they actually look).
Hideaki Sena holds a Ph.D. in pharmacology and has given numerous lectures on the subject of cell biology as well as the future of the sci-fi genre. He lives in Japan.
If you’re interested in Parasite Eve, check out The Crimson Labyrinth.
“Comes just in time for summer getaway reading… Oozes with enough violence and sexual perversity to make Caligula blush.”
—TIME
“Hideaki Sena, a pharmacologist, microbiologist and now pop icon, knows all too well how to combine the scientifically plausible with the psychologically unimaginable… Have fun with it, by all means, but don’t keep it on the bedside table.”
—Susan Salter Reynolds, The Los Angeles Times
“Parasite Eve combines Michael Crichton’s scientific cutting-edge plausibility with David Cronenberg’s abject flesh/sex horror. Throw in Frankenstein and The Blob, synthesize, and enjoy.”
—Fangoria
“Sena’s work in pharmacology and microbiology lends this Japanese import a sense of discovery and fear that resonates when new science is not fully understood. SF and horror fans who liked Suzuki Koji’s Ring…will find Parasite Eve a chilling tale on a cellular level; recommended.”
—Library Journal
