One night in Tokyo, four healthy teenagers die one after another of heart failure. Intrigued by the coincidence, a journalist investigates and learns of a videotape that the four watched together a week before dying. Amid a series of bizarre and frightening images is a warning that the viewer will die in exactly one week unless a certain act is performed. The description of the act, of course, has been erased from the videotape, and the journalist’s work to solve the mystery assumes a deadly urgency.

Ring is not only a chillingly told horror story but also a shrewdly intelligent and subversive commentary on the power of imagery and contagious consumerism. A blockbuster movie in Asia as well as a hit DreamWorks remake, the novel sold almost 3 million copies in Japan. Ring is the thriller that spawned the entire J-horror craze.

Though there is a Ring 2 movie, it has nothing to do with Koji Suzuki’s story. The real sequel, an avidly-awaited follow-up to the epoch-making Ring, is the acclaimed Spiral, in which Suzuki folds the story back on itself, reinterprets it, and adds levels of complexity, science, and horror. The Ring virus is mutating, and Ando, a medical doctor, must choose between possibly betraying his species and bringing back his drowned son. You don’t know what the Ring is yet…

In Loop, the trilogy’s mind-blowing conclusion, you know even less as the very reality of the Ring/Spiral world is questioned. The real world is the unreal in this highly cerebral metaphysical thriller.

“Aptly billed as the Japanese Stephen King.”
—Publishers Weekly

“(Suzuki’s) stories have a unique, alchemical quality to them and he has demonstrated a miraculous power for transmuting the very common into the very frightening.”
—Rue Morgue

Koji Suzuki is based in Tokyo, but likes to travel. He has written about fulfilling his lifelong dream of riding his motorcycle across the United States, from Los Angeles to Key West. Suzuki is also a published and respected authority on childrearing.

 

 

Read The New York Times’ interview with Koji Suzuki!

Click here to see tour photos!