A pulsating psycho-thriller from Ryu Murakami, author of "In the Miso Soup" A renaissance man for the postmodern age, Ryu Murakami?a musician, filmmaker ("Tokyo Decadence"), TV personality, and award-winning author?has gained a cult following in the West. His first novel, "Almost Transparent Blue," won Japan's most coveted literary prize and sold over a million copies, and his most recent psychosexual thriller, "In the Miso Soup," gave readers a further taste of his incredibly agile imagination. In "Piercing," Murakami, in his own unique style, explores themes of child abuse and what happens to the voiceless among us, weaving a disturbing, spare tale of two people who find each other and then are forced into hurting each other deeply because of the haunting specter of their own abuse as children.