Ryu Murakami - Tokyo Decadence - 2004

In a Tokyo in full decadence, young sex slaves of paid sex try to preserve a shred of dignity between one erotic encounter and another. All they find, however, is humiliation, perversion, brutal physical domination and the absolute emotional and sentimental emptiness. There are no traces of humanity in the Japanese capital, and the only escape is found in the past, in the memory of a carefree childhood that becomes a mythical golden age, or in the desperate and vain search for true love. In the pages of Tokyo Decadence, the ruthless and lucid portrait of a degrading descent into the collective hell, set against the backdrop of an alienating metropolis that reduces people to mere bodies, tearing away their soul.

A erotic masterpiece of postmodern Japanese literature, hitherto unpublished in Italy, it is the most significant and famous work of Ryu Murakami, who in 1991 drew from it a famous, controversial and beautiful film.