Death and the Flower: Six Stories
This is a REPRINT of an exceedingly difficult book to find.
Please allow two weeks for the book to be delivered.
Note: This book is a reproduction of the historical text for academic, historical, or collector purposes.
2014 edition printed in 2026 (Originally published in Japan as Sei to Shi no Gensou by Gentosha, Tokyo, 1995)
6" x 9" / 179 pages
Book description
Death and the Flower is a collection of six short stories centered on the themes of family and peril. The title is derived from a Keith Jarrett album of the same name.
Setting a precarious tone reminiscent more of The Spirit of the Beehive than his own mold-busting Ring trilogy, Death and the Flower may be horror-master Koji Suzuki’s most personal offering in English yet. Skirting genre expectations—even as revised by the author—and thus often overseen, all six of the tales herein are available in English for the first time.
In the longest of the stories, “Beyond the Darkness,” a couple with a baby daughter realizes that saving up and moving into a brand-new apartment does not mean that they have shaken off a vicious prank-caller. In “Disposable Diapers and a Race Replica,” a sporty father who is barely making ends meet by tutoring comes by some verities in exchange for a brush with death. In “Key West,” a young girl on a tourist trip with her daddy sees things recede that shouldn’t.
Common to the stories is a resilient affirmation of the place of family in our quest to wrest meaning from the maws of an unkind world. Predating the horror-themed collection Dark Water, whose title story inspired major motion pictures on both sides of the Pacific, Death and the Flower was Koji Suzuki’s first book of short stories.
