Paprika

Zusatztext “Yasutaka Tsutsui is the doyen of avant-garde Japanese writers. His work is by turns innovative! thought-provoking and – not least – extremely entertaining.” — The Independent (UK) Informationen zum Autor Yasutaka Tsutsui Klappentext Widely acknowledged as Yasutaka Tsutsui's masterpiece, Paprika unites his surreal, quirky imagination with a mind-bending narrative about a psychiatric institute that has developed the technology to invade people's dreams. When prototype models of a dream-invading device go missing at the Institute for Psychiatric Research, it transpires that someone is using them to drive people insane. Threatened both personally and professionally, brilliant psychotherapist Atsuko Chiba has to journey into the world of fantasy to fight her mysterious opponents. As she delves ever deeper into the imagination, the borderline between dream and reality becomes increasingly blurred, and nightmares begin to leak into the everyday realm. The scene is set for a final showdown between the dream detective and her enemies, with the subconscious as their battleground, and the future of the waking world at stake.1 Kosaku Tokita lumbered into the Senior Staff Room. He must have weighed at least two hundred fifty pounds. The air in the room grew hot and stuffy. The Senior Staff Room of the Institute for Psychiatric Research had five desks but only two regular occupants – Kosaku Tokita and Atsuko Chiba. Their desks jostled for space near the window at the far end of the room. The Senior Staff Room was separated from the Junior Staff Room by a glass door, but as the door was always left open, each just felt like an extension of the other. The sandwiches and coffee she’d brought from the Institute shop were still sitting on Atsuko Chiba’s desk. She had no appetite today; it was always the same old thing for lunch. The Institute had a canteen, used by staff and patients alike, but the meals it served were like horse feed. On the bright side, Atsuko’s lack of appetite meant she never had to gain weight or compromise her good looks – looks that had TV stations begging for her on an almost daily basis. But then again, barring their merits when treating patients, Atsuko had no interest at all in her own good looks or her TV appearances. “The staff are having kittens,” Tokita lisped as he lowered his bulky frame next to her. One of the therapists had gone down with paranoid delusions. “They say it’s contagious schizophrenia. None of them want to touch the scanners or reflectors.” “That is a worry,” said Atsuko. She herself often had such experiences. After all, psychiatrists had always been afraid of catching personality disorders from their patients; some even claimed that mental illness could be transmitted through the mucous membranes, like herpes. Ever since psychotherapy or “PT” devices had first come into use – particularly the scanners and reflectors that scanned and observed the inside of the psyche – this fear had come to assume an air of reality. “It’s the ones who don’t like identifying with their patients, the ones who pass on, who tend to worry about that kind of thing. Pff. You’d think an experience like that would give them a chance to self-diagnose as psychotherapists.” “Passing on” meant blaming it on the patient’s mental disorder when a therapist was unable to forge human bonds with a patient. It had been at the very root of schizophrenic diagnosis until just two decades earlier. “Oh no! Not chopped burdock with sesame and marinated pan-fried chicken yuan style, AGAIN!” Tokita thrust out his thick lower lip in disgust as he opened the lid of the bento lunch box prepared by his mother. Tokita lived alone with his mother in one of the Institute’s apartments. “I can’t eat that!” Atsuko’s appetite was duly aroused when she peered into Tokita’s sizable lunch box. For this was surely a nori bento – a t...

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Yasutaka Tsutsui
• Con la collaborazione di: Andrew Driver (Traduzione)
• Editore: Vintage USA
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 12.02.2013
• EAN: 9780307389183
• ISBN: 978-0-307-38918-3
• Pagine: 352
• Dimensioni: 135 mm x 205 mm x 20 mm
• Serie: Vintage Contemporaries; Vintage Contemporaries
• Categoria: Narrativa > Romanzi