ME, Paperback

"In Hoshino's dystopia, identities are fluid and any one is as good as another...Hoshino's ambitious novel is pleasingly uncomfortable."--Publishers Weekly" Some passages] surpass even Kobo Abe...The author has leaped to a higher level."--Kenzaburo Oe, Nobel Prize-winning author of The Silent Cry, from the afterword"Tomoyuki Hoshino's ME is a daring literary triumph, unlike any book you're likely to read this year or any other. Inventive, absurd, and thrilling, Hoshino draws upon the work of a wide array of literary masters--Abe, Camus, Vonnegut, and Chandler--to create a character and world that's wholly unique. A thoughtful, somewhat surreal exploration of the darkest self-reflexive tendencies of this modern moment. I strongly recommend it."--Joe Meno, author of Marvel and a Wonder"There is more than a little of a great episode of Black Mirror in Tomoyuki Hoshino's funny, frightening ME. But ME is considerably more than a clever premise, and as I moved deeper into mental and physical dislocation alongside its hero, I felt my own sense of reality being pulled apart. Hoshino's sharp, understated prose, in Charles De Wolf's excellent translation, is what makes this incredible journey possible. The whole is both pleasurable and profound.--Laird Hunt, author of The Evening Road With an afterword by Kenzaburō Ōe. Translated from Japanese by Charles De Wolf. This novel centers on the "It's me" telephone scam--often targeting the elderly--that has escalated in Japan in recent years. Typically, the caller identifies himself only by saying, "Hey, it's me," and goes on to claim in great distress that he's been in an accident or lost some money with which he was entrusted at work, etc., and needs funds wired to his account right away. ME's narrator is a nondescript young Tokyoite named Hitoshi Nagano who, on a whim, takes home a cell phone that a young man named Daiki Hiyama accidentally put on Hitoshi's tray at Mc Donald's. Hitoshi uses the phone to call Daiki's mother, pretendi