Monday, October 17, 2011

Book Review: Koushun Takami, Battle Royale (1999)


Lord of the Flies as formally organized competition: In a Japan-like dictatorship, 42 fifteen-year-old classmates are forced to play a killing game till one of them remains. Each kid is issued a bag of supplies—including one weapon, which could be anything from an Uzi to a fork—and they are turned loose on an island, where they will complete the competition or all be killed. The 2009 English-language edition of Koushun Takami’s Battle Royale features a newly corrected translation, interviews with the author and with the director of the film version, and a foreword by Max Allan Collins in which he makes a fair case for himself as the world’s coolest dad. These bonuses in some measure compensate for the novel’s weak dénouement, which culminates in perhaps the lamest final page in the history of the printed word. Grade: C+

5 comments:

  1. Battle Royale is also a manga series. I only read the first four volumes but I recall the series captured the book and film pretty well.

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  2. I was considering reading the manga, but then I saw several reader reviews on Amazon saying that I'd be better off reading Death Note, so I'm giving that a shot. We'll see how it goes--my experience with manga is almost nil.

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  3. is it just me, or does this sound like the hunger games on crack? also, David: your icon image is awesome, who is the artist? -Chad

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  4. Several younger people I've mentioned Battle Royale to have said, "Isn't that the book that The Hunger Games ripped off?"

    The icon image is a detail from the February 1959 cover of Trapped Detective Story Magazine. The artist is Will Hulsey.

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