Almost Transparent Blue KINDLE MOBI by Ryu Murakami

Ryu Murakami's debut novel, Almost Transparent Blue, was first submitted to a Japanese Literary journal in 1976, and won him first prize as well as won Murakami the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for that year. Seemingly plotness, it follows the narrator Ryu and his group of friends for about a week as they pursue a life of drugs and sex in a small town near an American airforce base, their sexual escapades with each other and their American airforce friends, detailing the use of heroin, alcohol, mescaline and other un-named substances and the extreme group sex they participate in--all to a background of American and British popular music of the time. Almost Transparent Blue brought Murakami to prominence first in Japan and then (within the artistic community) around the globe. He continues to write as well as to create screenplays and direct films. Murakami was labelled the voice of both dissolute directionless youth and of the outsiders who live on the fringes of conformist Japanese society. A short novel, it is at times unsettling and disturbing to read but demands further re-reads to appreciate the subtle commentary that can be interpreted as an indictment of how the outcast or rejected members of Japanese society are viewed, as well as the hedonistic cultural obliteration of global Americanization (H)