The Rope Artist

Fuminori Nakamura is one of Japan''s most powerful, most unsettling voices. His prizewinning literary noir masterpieces have covered topics such as Buddhism, cults, the fallibility of memory and ''self,'' pickpocketing techniques, terrorism, trauma, and, above all else, ''the dark side of human existence.'' The Wall Street Journal called his writing ''Dostoevskian,'' the Los Angeles Times praised his ''crime fiction that pushes past the bounds of genre, occupying its own nightmare realm,'' and the New York Times raved about his ''suspenseful study of obsession.'' And now Nakamura has returned with his most transgressive work yet: a deep dive into the practice of the sensual, ancient Japanese rope bondage known as kinbaku, and the murder of a skilled kinbaku master.