The Goddess Chronicle

Description

On an island the shape of a tear drop live two sisters. One is the Oracle, the other is damned. One is admired far and wide. The other must sacrifice her life to fulfil her destiny. But what will happen when she returns to the island for revenge?

Natuso Kirino is a leading figure in the recent boom of female writers of Japanese hard-boiled crime fiction. A prolific writer, she is most famous for her 1998 novel, Out, which received the Grand Prix for Crime Fiction, Japan's top mystery award and was a finalist (in translation) for the 2004 Edgar Award. So far, four of her novels have been translated into English: Out, Grotesque, Real World and What Remains. Rebecca Copeland is a professor of Japanese literature at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, where her research and teaching focuses on women, gender, and translation studies. A fan of Natsuo Kirino's work, she also translated her 2003 novel Grotesque

* Daring and disturbing ... [Kirino is] prepared to push the human limits of this world ... Remarkable Los Angeles Times * It is one of the most unexpected and playful novels to emerge from Japan in recent years ... a triumph. In its boldness and originality, it broadens our sense of what modern Japanese fiction can be -- (for Real World) Telegraph * Be prepared for a book utterly unlike anything we are used to in crime fiction -- (for Real World) Independent * Got my heart beating -- (for Out) Rose Tremain Daily Telegraph * In her wildly far-reaching tale of relations between gods and men, men and women, life and death, darkness and light, Natsuo Kirino tells a peripatetic, global, and truly satisfying love story of how it is to be human Stella Duffy * Kirino's retelling is a taut, disturbing and timeless tale, filled with rage and pathos for the battles that women have to fight every day, battles which have, apparently, existed from the moment of creation -- Tan Twan Eng the Guardian