Natsuo Kirino: Out/Die Umarmung des Todes

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By way of light (if slightly grim) relief, Natsuo Kirino’s wonderful crime novel called Die Umarmung des Todes in German (apparently translated into German earlier) and Out in English. Four women workers on the night shift at a lunchbox (bento) factory find themselves disposing of a body when one of them kills her husband. Almost totally convincing, whatever the summaries sound like, and gripping. Kirino has written many novels, but this appears to be the only one translated into German or English. (I see some of the German reviews call the boxed lunches Lunchpakete).

Deutsche Kritiken.
Japan Times article discussing translation of Japanese books into English.

3 thoughts on “Natsuo Kirino: Out/Die Umarmung des Todes

  1. Margaret,
    the Dutch reviews weren’t that positive about this book. But I think I’ll trust your judgment on this one ;-) andI’ll buy the book as soon as I’ve finished the Murakami new one.

  2. Well, maybe you ought not to trust me. I don’t like Murakami. I have read a couple and they seemed to me to lack depth and just be a display of trendy fireworks. I did like Kitchen, by Banana Yoshimoto, and the film too, which seems to have vanished into space. Would be interested in what the Dutch reviews didn’t like, but unless you’ve read the book it would be hard to make sense of.

  3. I’ll take the risk ;-) I liked Kitchen too, but I never saw the movie. The Dutch reviews simply said that Out was some kind of pulp fiction, lots of blood and murder and nothing else. What’s wrong with that?
    (Between you and me and the lamp post I don’t always trust Dutch journalists and critics.)
    As for Murakami, well.. we’ll have to talk about it over coffee + apple pie here in A’dam sometime :-)

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