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No literal description of Sayonara,
Gangsters’ plot could ever hope to do it justice. The
narrator is a poetry teacher named “Sayonara, Gangsters”
– he’s named after a gang that’s been knocking
off U.S. Presidents one after another in the novel’s facetious
near-future. Unfolding through short sketches that often read
like poetry or philosophical meditations, Sayonara, Gangsters
is a hilarious and inventive postmodernist novel about language,
expression, and the creative process from Haruki Murakami’s
way-more-out-there literary cousin.
Genichiro Takahashi, b. 1951, never graduated
from Yokohama National University. As a student radical, he was
arrested and spent half a year in prison, a harrowing experience
that rendered him incapable of reading or writing for several
years. Sayonara, Gangsters took the literary establishment
by storm and remains at the summits of postmodern writing in Japanese
or any other language. Other novels by Takahashi include John
Lennon vs. The Martians, A*D*U*L*T, and The
Rise and Fall of Japanese Literature. Also a literary critic,
he is the author of The Maybe-It’s-Not-Literature Syndrome
and other popular collections. Winner of the Mishima and other
coveted literary awards, Takahashi has been the best-kept secret
of readers of Japanese... until now. Sayonara, Gangsters
is his first full-length work to be published in English.
To
see Genichiro Takahashi Tour photos, click here.
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“And
now, for something completely different: Genichiro Takahashi’s
Sayonara, Gangsters, in a sophisticated, eye-grabbing hardcover
from Japanese pop-fiction powerhouse Vertical.” —Bookslut
“A
brilliant book is a brilliant book, and no matter how far Takahashi’s
prose wanders from the status quo, there’s no way in the
world anyone could mistake its superiority.”
—Las Vegas Mercury
“Part
science fiction, part poetry, part philosophical treatise and
noir thriller, with the odd graphic element tossed in, Sayonara,
Gangsters is a playful blend, a true work of metafiction
that never takes itself too seriously...Who says serious literature
can't be fun?”
—Grand Rapids Press
“Takahashi has dispensed with the commitment
to realism that seems to inform most Japanese fiction, in favor
of a richly playful style of storytelling that is fabulous...Think
of Pynchon with an editor, Donald Barthelme but
funnier, or Italo Calvino just as he is.”—The
Japan Times
“Sayonara, Gangsters is a light, poetic, enjoyable
read, full of crafted imagery.” —The
Onion A.V. Club
“Sayonara, Gangsters is amazing…(it) is a
virtuoso blending of humor, nuance, and absurdity. This is a novel
that will immediately captivate daring readers.”
— Powell’s Books, Review-a-day
"The novel's absurdities...neatly balance its tender, humane
depictions of love and loss." —Washington
Post
"Amusing, sexy, moving, intelligent and maddeningly obtuse
- often all at once." —Publishers
Weekly
"Sayonara, Gangsters is one of those rare books
that actually defies description…It's funny, sure. And beautiful.
And slightly insane. And haunting. And heart-breaking. But all
those words miss the point. The point is you have to read it.
So read it."—Jonathan Safran Foer
"Sayonara, Gangsters…(is) a thrillingly
unhinged perpetual-motion machine full of absurd sex and violence,
greased with the awesome confidence of a writer so committed to
thumbing his nose at convention that he discovers caverns of wonder
deep within said schnozz."
—Village Voice
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