“A great novel that comes once in a few decades.”
An unprecedented masterpiece that simultaneously won Japan's three major literary awards.
The 153rd Naoki Prize winner was selected unanimously by the judges!

Akira Higashiyama's "Ryu," which swept Japan's top literary awards, including the 153rd Naoki Prize, the "This Mystery is Amazing" award, and the "Japan Booksellers' Award" upon its publication, has finally been published in Korea after a long-awaited request from Korean readers.
This novel, which had been the center of attention among Japanese novel enthusiasts even before its domestic publication was decided, was the first novel to be unanimously selected as the Grand Prize winner of the Naoki Prize, one of Japan's top literary awards, in the 2000s, and also received the highest praise, saying, "This is a great masterpiece that comes out once in several decades."
Author Akira Higashiyama also emerged as a new hope to save the Japanese literary world, which had been in a long slump.

As can be seen in the reviews such as “The writing is so good that it makes you feel like the characters in the novel are alive and walking the streets” and “It has the power to draw the reader into chaos”, the characters in “Ryu” are quite interesting, full of personality, and constantly draw us into the novel.
Let's dive into the incredible chaos of history created by this author who has captured the attention of the entire world.

With my eyes glued to the bathtub, I groped around and pressed the wall switch.
A flood of fluorescent lights poured down from the ceiling, revealing what had been trapped inside a black mirror.
The sharp sound exploded like a grenade.
The swaying water caused my sense of balance to collapse, and the washroom twisted like melted maltose.
I opened my eyes wide and walked as if I was being sucked in.
As I looked into the bathtub, my eyes met with my own pale face reflected in the water.
I was gaping like a fish.
The eyes were out of focus.
Another face was locked beneath mine.
The few hairs left on his head were swaying like seaweed.
There were large bubbles all around his nostrils.
His mouth was wide open and his bloodshot, bright red eyes were empty.
Her hands were tied behind her back and her ankles were wrapped with several layers of cloth.
The grandfather was lying on the bottom of the water, his body folded in the shape of a turtle.
It took about a hundred years for my head to catch up with reality.
Oh, I swallowed my voice and took a step back without realizing it.
--- p.35~36

“It’s Wang Kechang.
"Did you forget? Everyone called me a black dog."
“Black dog, black dog!” Grandpa Lee patted his head and said, “Your head is old!” The Japanese called him “Wangko” because his name sounded similar to the Japanese word for dog, Wangko-chan.
Anyway, many villages were completely ruined by that traitor's tricks.
That was July 1943.
“Hey, your grandfather and I are out on the street selling cooking oil.”
I nodded.
“I sneaked out in the middle of the night because I knew the Japanese wouldn’t let me get away with it, but when I came back the next day, all the villagers were dead.
It was a hot day, as if the world was ending.
Mr. Guo, isn't that right?"
Grandpa Guo nodded and lit a cigarette.
“Your grandfather’s parents and brothers were all locked in the village hall and murdered with poison gas.
A few people were hiding in a small temple on the outskirts of town, and they said that the black dog had brought a Japanese man.
okay
“Your grandfather went with a man named Shualhu to kill a black dog.”
“Isn’t that the person who was your grandfather’s leader?”
“Oh, yeah.
“He is Wei Yuan’s father.”
Uncle Wi Woo-won's name on his family register is 'Ye Wi-won', but his real name is 'Shu Wi-won'.
--- p.45

Who on earth would make my immortal grandfather like that?
Even though mainlanders had been coming to Taiwan from the mainland for 30 years, most elderly people still regarded it as a temporary home.
My heart was always on the continent.
He was filled with the determination to return home in triumph if the Kuomintang ever counterattacked and turned the situation around.
Until Chiang Kai-shek's death completely extinguished their hopes, the stubborn people consoled their helpless longing by singing the heartbreaking song "My Home is the Continent."
In the old-fashioned love song "How can I not think of him" that I heard on the radio, I changed the word "him" to "continent" and shed tears of homesickness.
As a Taiwanese born person, I understood it even though I couldn't understand it.
My grandfathers fought a war on the continent, took a short break in Taiwan, and were ready to fight again.
It would be foolish to create a fight during rest without foresight.
Grandpa is not that kind of fool.
He was a man who kept his German-made Mauser pistol polished to a shine, ready to go out at any moment. That was my thought.
If, as Officer Zhou suspected, this was due to resentment, then the place where that resentment arose had to be mainland China.
If that's the case, then the culprit is an alien.
I fantasized.
The image of someone who, dreaming of revenge, entered the ship of the Kuomintang fleeing to Taiwan like a shard of glass.
On a deck full of the wounded, on a ship clinging to a fleeting farewell to their distant homeland, in a corner of the ship where even breathing was difficult due to the wailing of a newborn and the overcrowding of others, those who dreamed of revenge would have quietly steeled their resolve and glared at Shincheonji with dark eyes.
--- p.57~58

I liked my grandfather very much, but the more I learned about his character, the less I could love him openly.
My grandfather was utterly weak to those close to him, and while he displayed iron-like loyalty, he was downright rude to others.
It was incredibly rude.
I also heard this story.
After the typhoon passed, my grandfather was walking in the botanical garden and discovered a fallen beehive.
As I was watching quietly, I noticed another old man passing by lifting the hive and starting to dig out the honey and eat it.
People passing by also stopped and joined in.
Then the grandfather is said to have scolded him.
"You savages! When will the light of civilization ever come to this island?" I listened, utterly intimidated, to the words of the old men who remembered my grandfather.
I walked towards the pond.
There were about two people singing, and both of them had their radios turned up to the max. One was singing a Taiwanese song, the other a Japanese song.
I asked a scary-looking woman, and she yelled something in Taiwanese and chased me towards a Japanese song.
Over there, the grandmother was humming “Twilight Moonlight Night” to the accompaniment of a violinist, and the violinist was the man above.
--- p.183

The old building with white tiles had a self-service restaurant on the first floor, an acupuncture and moxibustion clinic on the second floor, and a sign that said 'Buying Finance' on the third floor.
There was a row of motorcycles parked next to the shabby stairs.
The KMT loves motorcycles, so the number of motorcycles in Taiwan has increased without end, and illegal parking has occurred everywhere.
The black car in question, which Xiao Zhan had blown off its side mirror, was also parked, as if protected by a motorcycle.
Before I could turn off the engine, Uncle Wei Wuyuan quickly took the pistol from my waist.
“What are you going to do with this?” He pressed the barrel of the gun hard against my cheek.
"Hey kid, were you trying to play a prank? Huh? Then I'll shoot you dead right now."
I shook my head.
“You wait here.”
“I’m going too.”
My uncle grabbed me by the collar.
“If you follow me, I won’t be able to help you.”
I tried not to look away, but 5 seconds was the limit.
Uncle Wi Woo-won's eyes were filled with unwavering anger.
“Never come up here.” My uncle hammered the nail again as I averted my eyes.
“I don’t want to see my family hurt anymore.”
“…….”
At that moment, for the first time in my life, I felt like I knew someone else's heart.
I began to understand what it meant to lose my grandfather and be hurt by my family.
Uncle Wi Woo-won also experienced the feeling of having a sign carved on his forehead with a knife and spit on his soul a long time ago.
When his grandfather was busy trying to save Shualhu's family from the war, Uncle Wei Yuan hid in a manure bin, cursing his helplessness as he listened to the screams of his dying mother and sister.
--- p.261~262

The following photo contained a panoramic view of the continent's will-o'-the-wisps shrine.
On either side of the red shrine, which seemed to be hanging from a rock face, withered willow trees were hanging their branches in winter.
“Aha, is this your grandfather’s hometown?”
“It’s a strange thing,” said Grandpa Lee.
“The son of the man your grandfather killed visits your grandfather’s shrine to the will-o’-the-wisp without hesitation.
“Because people who used to kill each other a long time ago are now smiling in a photo.”
I flipped through the photos and returned to the first photo.
Just as Grandpa Lee said, everyone was looking at the camera with bright faces.
“Huh?” I asked, sticking my face in the photo.
“The person in the middle of this picture…….”
“That guy who gave it to me, didn’t anyone write that he was the son of a black dog?” When Grandpa Lee said that, Grandma continued.
“Isn’t that the person in the middle? His clothes are neater than the others.”
“But this person…….”
I tried to show the photo to them both, but they both said they couldn't see it without a magnifying glass anyway, so I gave up.
And then we talked endlessly about this month's gathering.
I looked at the photo again, my eyes wide.
The man smiling in the middle was wearing a dark brown half-coat and had a duffel bag thrown at his feet.

--- p.372~373