Abstract

Calamities is a collection of seven fantastic short stories about physical sensations in the vein of Marcel Aymé and Aliya Whitely, as well as Masakuni Oda's highly anticipated follow-up to Zangetsuki (2021, untranslated), which won him both the Japan SF Grand Prix and the Eiji Yoshikawa Literary Prize for New Writers. Calamities describes the fate of people who stray to the blurred boundaries of reality. Blending realistic descriptions of society with elements of fantasy, Oda's writing is dense yet limpid, which will appeal not only to readers of genre fiction but also to literature fans.

“Caught up in the nightmare of Calamities, I lost myself in an eternal kaleidoscope.”
- Junji Ito, mangaka

“The author is sure to become a ‘calamity’ in the literary world.”
- Hideo Kojima, video game creator

“Extreme imagination.”
- Riku Onda, writer

Author’s Information

Masakuni Oda was born in Miyagi Prefecture in Japan in 1974. Studied political science at Kansai University in Osaka. He began his writing career in 2009 with Zodaiha ni tsugu, for which he won the Japan Fantasy Prize. In 2022, his third novel, Zangetsuki, won the Japan SF Grand Prix and he was awarded the the Eiji Yoshikawa Literary Prize for New Writers.