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Review
The nice thing about Tsutsui is that history and modernity combine effortlessly, as do drab reality and fantasy. --Philip Hensher, The Daily Telegraph
Imagine a manic JG Ballard, but one with an even darker past to work out --Nick Lezard, The Guardian
Imagine a manic JG Ballard, but one with an even darker past to work out --Nick Lezard, The Guardian
Imagine a manic JG Ballard, but one with an even darker past to work out --Nick Lezard, The Guardian
Imagine a manic JG Ballard, but one with an even darker past to work out --Nick Lezard, The Guardian
Review
Yasutaka Tsutsui is the doyen of avant-garde Japanese writers. His work is by turns innovative, thought-provoking and - not least - extremely entertaining... Tsutsui stands squarely within the modern an post-modern domain from Franz Kafka to J.G. Ballard
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Seeing that there are numerous summaries of the book, this review shall focus almost purely on my reaction to the book and reasoning behind the score I gave it.
Having watched the film (and, admittedly, enjoying it), I did some reading on it and found out that it had been a book. Written more than a decade ago, there is something to it that seems so modern and hardly came across as dated science fiction. I thought the characters were well developed and the books mixed Western and Eastern tradition very well (although it did seem like Mr. Tsutsui alluded to Western thought as being a vehicle of corruption via it's effect on Dr. Inui, however this is debatable and a point you may be able to see after reading the book).
I had a very difficult time putting down this work and really enjoyed reading it. I couldn't help but sense, however, that something got lost in translation.
My reasoning behind the 5 stars I'm giving the book is based on readability, enjoyment, creativity, intelligence, and the difficulty level of putting it down. It was fast paced with hardly a dull moment which made reading it throughout a joy, rather than a chore. It's a very creative concept and I thought Mr. Tsutsui did a wonderful job developing the characters and the who concept of a D.C. mini, taking such a simple idea that many of us have thought about (looking into someone else's dreams) and bringing it to life in such a realistic (and terrifying) fashion. As a major of Psychology at a University level, I found this extremely fascinating and think he did a great job psychologically developing the characters and thought the concepts he used to be very fitting.
So, my only regret to this is that I am forced to read a translation (which can never truly do any literary work justice). It makes me wish I had studied Japanese so I could reap the full enjoyment of such a wonderful tale.
Having watched the film (and, admittedly, enjoying it), I did some reading on it and found out that it had been a book. Written more than a decade ago, there is something to it that seems so modern and hardly came across as dated science fiction. I thought the characters were well developed and the books mixed Western and Eastern tradition very well (although it did seem like Mr. Tsutsui alluded to Western thought as being a vehicle of corruption via it's effect on Dr. Inui, however this is debatable and a point you may be able to see after reading the book).
I had a very difficult time putting down this work and really enjoyed reading it. I couldn't help but sense, however, that something got lost in translation.
My reasoning behind the 5 stars I'm giving the book is based on readability, enjoyment, creativity, intelligence, and the difficulty level of putting it down. It was fast paced with hardly a dull moment which made reading it throughout a joy, rather than a chore. It's a very creative concept and I thought Mr. Tsutsui did a wonderful job developing the characters and the who concept of a D.C. mini, taking such a simple idea that many of us have thought about (looking into someone else's dreams) and bringing it to life in such a realistic (and terrifying) fashion. As a major of Psychology at a University level, I found this extremely fascinating and think he did a great job psychologically developing the characters and thought the concepts he used to be very fitting.
So, my only regret to this is that I am forced to read a translation (which can never truly do any literary work justice). It makes me wish I had studied Japanese so I could reap the full enjoyment of such a wonderful tale.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Do dreams show who we really are? Can you shape others by changing their dreams? Maybe the answer to both of the questions is yes. Welcome to the world of Paprika, where it is sometimes hard to differentiate between dreams and reality.
At institute of Psychiatric Research a dream viewing device has been invented. It allows not just viewing of others dreams, but also allows the operator to enter and affect the dreams of others. The experimental devices are used to treat mentally ill patients like schizophrenics. As rumors about a Nobel price surface, a power struggle for the control of the institute ensues. A struggle that is not only fought in reality but also in dreams.
As the story moves on, it sometimes becomes more and more difficult to tell the difference between the real world and the dreams. This isn't helped by storytelling that occasionally breaks the flow of the story and in some cases makes the characters act in way you would hardly expect (if you have a crisis in your hands, a dinner at posh restaurant hardly sounds like the thing I would do, but maybe that's just me). All this adds to a dream like story, where you're never quite sure what is going to happen, and what is real and what is not. Just like dreams.
One minor issue I had with the book is the translation. In some cases the English doesn't flow as fluently as it should. You can occasionally see traces of the original Japanese structure and in some cases you see how the sentences have been bloated to make it readable English, because Japanese as a language is very ambiguous. Feels like the translator should've been more creative and flexible.
But the issue issue in my opinion is very minor, leaving Paprika as a superb reading experience. Recommended to all those keen about sci-fi, but also to non sci-fi fans, as the book to me didn't read like sci-fi novel at all. It was a thriller mixed with a good dose of dreams and nightmares. It makes you think about your own dreams.
And yes for those familiar with lucid dreaming, the concept of lucid dreaming (act of realizing in a dream that you are dreaming) is apparent in the novel even if it isn't ever mentioned. So if you're into lucid dreaming, then this will of course be an interesting read.
Happy dreaming
At institute of Psychiatric Research a dream viewing device has been invented. It allows not just viewing of others dreams, but also allows the operator to enter and affect the dreams of others. The experimental devices are used to treat mentally ill patients like schizophrenics. As rumors about a Nobel price surface, a power struggle for the control of the institute ensues. A struggle that is not only fought in reality but also in dreams.
As the story moves on, it sometimes becomes more and more difficult to tell the difference between the real world and the dreams. This isn't helped by storytelling that occasionally breaks the flow of the story and in some cases makes the characters act in way you would hardly expect (if you have a crisis in your hands, a dinner at posh restaurant hardly sounds like the thing I would do, but maybe that's just me). All this adds to a dream like story, where you're never quite sure what is going to happen, and what is real and what is not. Just like dreams.
One minor issue I had with the book is the translation. In some cases the English doesn't flow as fluently as it should. You can occasionally see traces of the original Japanese structure and in some cases you see how the sentences have been bloated to make it readable English, because Japanese as a language is very ambiguous. Feels like the translator should've been more creative and flexible.
But the issue issue in my opinion is very minor, leaving Paprika as a superb reading experience. Recommended to all those keen about sci-fi, but also to non sci-fi fans, as the book to me didn't read like sci-fi novel at all. It was a thriller mixed with a good dose of dreams and nightmares. It makes you think about your own dreams.
And yes for those familiar with lucid dreaming, the concept of lucid dreaming (act of realizing in a dream that you are dreaming) is apparent in the novel even if it isn't ever mentioned. So if you're into lucid dreaming, then this will of course be an interesting read.
Happy dreaming
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Tsutsui was born in 1934 and is best known in the West for this novel and for 'The Girl who Leapt Through Time' (1967). Both books have lately enjoyed anime adaptations. His output is in fact prodigious and it's fashionable to suggest that Tsutsui is more deserving of international success than Haruki Murakami.
This is a bit like complaining that tomatoes should be more successful than washing powder, since - other than a sci-fi link (which Murakami only adopts 50% of the time) - the two authors are very different. This is a highly serviceable translation, but it doesn't suggest Tsutsui is any kind of literary stylist. The older author's lesser global renown is also readily explained by the national obsessions so evident in 'Paprika'.
Here po-faced men fence in boardrooms hide behind their rigid public status; only able to relax in bars where Beatles music and obscure Scotch whiskies punctuate their reluctant journeys back to shrewish wives. Oh. And throw in two-or-three rape fantasies for good measure.
The reader who can get past this will find an entertaining pulp sci-fi novel in which psychiatric researchers unwittingly puncture the barrier between dreams and reality. Rather like the 'Freudian' detective writer John Franklin Bardin, Tsutsui uses a pulp format to play with theoretical ideas; but unlike Bardin he wears his brain (rather than his heart) on his sleeve. There's a lot of psychological tosh which already (20 years after publication) seems dated, and no consideration at all for neurology.
Tsutsui's dreamscapes reveal all personalities to be essentially morbid: devoid of family affection, hampered by guilt and motivated by glory. The plot seems to endorse this: scores of people killed, half of Tokyo ransacked - and why? Because the protagonists want to win the Nobel prize (the irony being that Murakami, Tsutsui's 'nemesis', was once supposed to have actually won the Nobel prize!). Tsutsui might have done better to read Adler than Jung or Freud, although the book wouldn't have been half as much fun if he had.
And it is fun, in a Doctor Who sort of way. The old Doctor Who that is. The characterisation is immutable, only the scenery surprises and the bad guy (blinded by his own insanity) never has a chance from the start.
This is a bit like complaining that tomatoes should be more successful than washing powder, since - other than a sci-fi link (which Murakami only adopts 50% of the time) - the two authors are very different. This is a highly serviceable translation, but it doesn't suggest Tsutsui is any kind of literary stylist. The older author's lesser global renown is also readily explained by the national obsessions so evident in 'Paprika'.
Here po-faced men fence in boardrooms hide behind their rigid public status; only able to relax in bars where Beatles music and obscure Scotch whiskies punctuate their reluctant journeys back to shrewish wives. Oh. And throw in two-or-three rape fantasies for good measure.
The reader who can get past this will find an entertaining pulp sci-fi novel in which psychiatric researchers unwittingly puncture the barrier between dreams and reality. Rather like the 'Freudian' detective writer John Franklin Bardin, Tsutsui uses a pulp format to play with theoretical ideas; but unlike Bardin he wears his brain (rather than his heart) on his sleeve. There's a lot of psychological tosh which already (20 years after publication) seems dated, and no consideration at all for neurology.
Tsutsui's dreamscapes reveal all personalities to be essentially morbid: devoid of family affection, hampered by guilt and motivated by glory. The plot seems to endorse this: scores of people killed, half of Tokyo ransacked - and why? Because the protagonists want to win the Nobel prize (the irony being that Murakami, Tsutsui's 'nemesis', was once supposed to have actually won the Nobel prize!). Tsutsui might have done better to read Adler than Jung or Freud, although the book wouldn't have been half as much fun if he had.
And it is fun, in a Doctor Who sort of way. The old Doctor Who that is. The characterisation is immutable, only the scenery surprises and the bad guy (blinded by his own insanity) never has a chance from the start.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Weird, but wonderful!
I bought this book because I saw the following phrase on the cover:
A Japanese master to be ranked alongside Haruki Murakami
I hadn't heard of the author, but... Read more
A Japanese master to be ranked alongside Haruki Murakami
I hadn't heard of the author, but... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Jackie
Disappointing
I was excited to read this after falling for the blurb on the back but found it fell far short of what it promised. Read more
Published 20 months ago by Mrs Mitten
Intriguing
I bought this book upon discovering that I'd left my current read at home. Horrified, I quickly bought this one and hopped on my train, and I read it before my four hour journey... Read more
Published on 20 July 2009 by S Brewis
I unable to put this book down (read it on the train, while...
What a fantastic, gripping book. The book is set in an institute where mental patients are treated using electronical devices that make it possible to access the patients' dreams. Read more
Published on 8 Jun 2009 by Sybil_Service2007
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