(pb; 1993)
From the back cover
“When the prototype models for
a dream-invading device go missing at the Institute for Psychic Research,
employees soon learn that someone is using these new machines to drive them all
insane. Brilliant psychotherapist Atsuko Chiba—whose alter ego is a dream
detective named Paprika—realizes she is in danger. She must venture into the
dream world in order to fight her mysterious opponents. Soon nightmares begin
to leak into daily life and the borderline between dream and reality grows
unclear. The future of the waking world is at stake.”
Review
Paprika is an
excellent hybrid science fiction/thriller/horror detective story that blends bleeding-edge
technology, eroticism, corporate and scientific malfeasance, religious fervor, hope
and darker aspects of human nature. Initially mostly waking-world realistic in
its storytelling Paprika gradually, entertainingly slips further into dreason
(“dream reason”), sleeping nightmare situations seamlessly mixing with
waking-world reality, until it becomes a phantasmagoric-monster orgiastic
horror novel, with characters worth rooting for or hissing at. Worth owning,
this, especially for fans of Christopher Nolan's 2010 film Inception.
#
The resulting 2006 fêted Japanese anime feature of the same name was directed and co-scripted by Satoshi Kon. Kon’s
fellow screenwriters: source book-author Yasutaka Tsutsui and Seishi Minakami.
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