Name: Evil and the Mask
ISBN: 9781616952129

Fuminori Nakamura

Informed by his elderly, enigmatic father that he was created to cause misery in an uncontrollable world, Fuminori is educated to invoke as much destruction and unhappiness as possible and lives a hedonist life without repercussions before starting to question his father's mandates. By the award-winning author of The Thief.

Evil and the Mask

jess

"Happiness is a fortress." - Fuminori Nakamura.
The quote fits the last puzzle of the plot, the head of the Kuki family, an aristocratic clan with a successful business empire, deems to turn his youngest son, Fumihiro, into a “cancer” on the world, “a personification of evil … a being that will make this world miserable” — just as previous generations of Kuki patriarchs had done, profiting from the dark influence these “cancers” had on war, politics and business. Of course, the protagonist, Fumihiro, has other ideas. Fueling an immense desire to protect the adopted daughter of Kuki family, also his first love, he set up to destroy Kuki's family with the addition of the transformation of another man for himself.
Nakamura's fiction blurs the line between the crime and literary genres, with “Evil and the Mask” mixing noir and the existential question of free will. The ending was a bit rushed and the book filled more of unnecessary "TED-talk" rather than the implicating actions. Re-reading has never once showed up in my thoughts, but I found that there is a movie version of this book, which I may check it out, not soon.

Dennis Jacob Rosenfeld

High concept novel that fails to deliver in almost every aspect.

S. R. Spencer

Informed by his father that he was created to cause misery, Fuminori is educated to invoke as much destruction and unhappiness as possible and lives a hedonist life without repercussions before starting to question his father's mandates.