Fish Swimming in Dappled Sunlight - by Riku Onda (Paperback)

About the Book

"Set in Tokyo over the course of one night, Aki and Hiro have decided to be together one last time in their shared flat before parting. Their relationship has broken down after a mountain trek during which their guide died inexplicably. Now each believes the other to be a murderer and is determined to extract a confession before the night is over. Who is the murderer and what really happened on the mountain? In the battle of wills between them, the chain of events leading up to this night is gradually revealed in a gripping psychological thriller that keeps the reader in suspense to the very end."--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

"A Quicksilver Mystery That Flickers, Flashes, Twists And Turns." New York Times, 21 July 2022. From the author of The Aosawa Murders, one of the NYT Notable Books of 2020.

Set in Tokyo over the course of one night, Aki and Hiro have decided to be together one last time in their shared flat before parting. Their relationship has broken down after a mountain trek during which their guide died inexplicably. Now each believes the other to be a murderer and is determined to extract a confession before the night is over. Who is the murderer and what really happened on the mountain?

In the battle of wills between them, the chain of events leading up to this night is gradually revealed in a gripping psychological thriller that keeps the reader in suspense to the very end.

Review Quotes

Praise for Fish Swimming in Dappled Sunlight

"A Quicksilver Mystery That Flickers, Flashes, Twists And Turns. A dreamy, circuitous psychological thriller. What drives the novel is not a mounting sense of danger, but a series of wild epiphanies that fall like stones then disappear, leaving only the vague, lingering feeling that the water has been disturbed." New York Times

"A masterclass in thriller writing." Daily Mail

"Book of the Month: an original, unsettling psychological thriller full of dark twists and emotional nihilism." Independent

" Roams the existential gamut from impulses to flight to reconciliation to suicide pacts. The committed reader will admire this clinical demonstration of the workings of two mercurial personalities." Wall Street Journal.

"This tour de force demonstrates how suggesting events can be so much more powerful than explicitly depicting them. Fans of psychological thrillers will be enthralled." Publishers Weekly

"Memory, identity, attraction: they are all flickering fish of the mind, changing direction throughout our lives. Elusive but there, they constantly swim just below the surface of our consciousness." Japan Times

The Aosawa Murders also by Riku Onda

Chosen as one of Most Notable Books of 2020. "Strange, engrossing, stubbornly non-linear..." NYT

One of the Best Mystery Novels of 2020. "Tantalising as a scene glimpsed through a half-open door, this is an utterly immersive puzzler in which nothing is entirely cut and dried." Guardian

"Part psychological thriller, part murder mystery--is audacious in conception and brilliant in execution." WSJ

"Rich and strange, utterly absorbing." The Times (London)

"Can this book open up the world of Japanese crime in the way that The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo opened up Scandi Noir? I hope so." Globe and Mail

"This dark and dazzling novel defies easy categorization but consistently tantalizes and surprises." KIRKUS starred review

Praise for The Aosawa Murders

NYT: Chosen as one of Most Notable Books of 2020. "Strange, engrossing, stubbornly non-linear..."

Guardian: One of the Best Mystery Novels of 2020. "Tantalising as a scene glimpsed through a half-open door, this is an utterly immersive puzzler in which nothing is entirely cut and dried."

WSJ: "Part psychological thriller, part murder mystery--is audacious in conception and brilliant in execution."

The Times: "Rich and strange, utterly absorbing."

Globe and Mail: "Can this book open up the world of Japanese crime in the way that The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo opened up Scandi Noir? I hope so."

KIRKUS starred review: "This dark and dazzling novel defies easy categorization but consistently tantalizes and surprises."

About the Author

Riku Onda, born in 1964, has been writing fiction since 1991 and has published prolifically since. She has won the Yoshikawa Eiji Prize for New Writers, the Japan Booksellers' Award, the Yamamoto Shūgorō Prize and the Naoki Prize. Her work has been adapted for film and television.

Fish Swimming in Dappled Sunlight is her second novel to be published in English. The first was The Aosawa Murders which won the prestigious Mystery Writers of Japan Award for Best Novel and was selected by The New York Times as a Notable Book for 2020.