Pathway to Japanese Literature
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Human SausageAuthor: Yumeno Kyūsaku
| Original Title | 人間腸詰 |
|---|---|
| Author | 夢野 久作 |
| Genre | Detective & Mystery |
| Author Type | Male Author |
| Summary | A carpenter’s journey to America for a World’s Fair becomes a surreal nightmare of deception and dread. Tasked with constructing a Taiwanese tea pavilion in St. Louis, the narrator—a brash yet superstitious craftsman—navigates cultural disorientation, feverish delusions about Earth’s roundness, and a sinister undercurrent lurking beneath the exposition’s spectacle. When seduced by enigmatic women tied to a shadowy gang, he’s lured into a labyrinth of mirrored rooms and mercury-lit horrors, where human bodies vanish into grinding machines. Betrayal, grotesque violence, and spectral whispers blur reality as he narrowly escapes becoming “sausage meat” in a conspiracy spanning continents. Decades later, recounting the tale over sake, fragments linger: a ghostly voice chanting promotional slogans, a canned sausage concealing grisly secrets, and the haunting truth of those swallowed by America’s underbelly. Darkly humorous and unnerving, this twisted odyssey probes colonialism’s absurdities and the fragility of sanity when faced with the world’s hidden rot—all while leaving one chilling question unspoken: *What else was ground into oblivion?* |
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