国境の南

Kinda bad

I have read one Akagawa before this and I enjoyed that one a lot more. I read this one because the premise was so ambitious that I wondered if he would actually make it work. Unfortunately, its very unrealistic.

While Akagawa seems to specialize in writing large ensemble pieces, this one is difficult to follow because multiple characters are introduced at the beginning and only become vaguely relevant in the last few pages (I hope you took notes). Meanwhile, there are multiple storylines that eventually converge that are, frankly, uninteresting until the end. Likewise, the political statement is boring and uninspired.

As for language learning, I found myself very confused throughout the novel. It's the 7th～novel I have read and I only had a vague idea of what was going on in some scenes. Other scenes are perfectly clear. The vocabulary is not especially unique other than a few political terms here and there. It is otherwise very pedestrian.

The main draw to his writing is how fun his stories are. This just wasn't fun until the last chapter, which has a spectacularly silly ending. I wouldn't recommend this to a Japanese native speaker or to a language learner. However, if you specifically like Akagawa and you're tired of classic mysteries, this might be something you would like.