One of the men

Product details

“One of the Men has all the hallmarks of a gripping detective story: a grieving wife, a dead man whose name belongs to someone else, cryptic coded messages, and a lawyer determined to uncover the truth. Yet, beneath the surface lies a deeply thought-out narrative, whose intriguing premise opens onto a profound exploration of questions of identity and artistic creation, a work deeply rooted in Japanese cultural history.” – Arts Desk
"A thrilling novel" - Words Without Borders
“Hirano has continued to grapple with new themes since his debut. In this work, he has reached the fundamental question of what constitutes human existence.” – Yoko Ogawa, author of “Memory Police”

identification
Kido, a divorce lawyer, is on the verge of marriage collapse due to emotional estrangement. Adding to his looming midlife crisis, Kido's life is turned upside down by the return of a former client who wants him to investigate a dead man—her recently deceased husband. After his death, she discovered he had been living a huge lie: his name, his past, his identity—all belonged to someone else. The investigation draws Kido into two gripping mysteries: uncovering the husband's true identity and discovering more about the man he pretended to be. With each new revelation, Kido's obsession and temptation to erase someone's life to create a new one intensifies.
This compelling philosophical Japanese novel won the prestigious Yomiuri Prize for Literature in Japan. In it, Keiichiro Hirano, one of Japan's most important contemporary writers, explores identity, the ambiguity of memory, the stories we live and die by, and the reconciliation between who you hoped to be and who you actually became.
This novel has been translated into several languages ​​and has been adapted into a successful film that has won a number of awards.

About the author
Keiichiro Hirano is a Japanese novelist born in 1975. His debut novel, "Eclipse," won the Akutagawa Prize, Japan's most prestigious literary award, while he was a student at Kyoto University, making him the youngest recipient of the award at the time. His subsequent works and awards included the 2009 Minister of Education and Culture Award for "The Dam Breaks," the Bunkamura Dogoma Prize for "Dawn," the French Order of Arts and Letters in 2014, and the Junichi Watanabe Prize for "After the Matinee."
His novel "One of the Men" won the prestigious Yomiuri Literature Award in 2018 and came in second place in the Grand Library Awards. It was also adapted into a film directed by Kei Ishikawa, which won numerous international awards, including most of the Japanese Academy of Film Awards in 2023. The film also participated in the Cairo International Film Festival in 2022 and won the Best Screenplay Award.

About the translator
Maisara Afifi is an Egyptian translator, born in Cairo and living in Japan since 1996. He has translated and written numerous studies, lectures, research papers, short stories, and articles. His translations of several Japanese novels have been published, including: "Killing Commendatore" by Haruki Murakami, "The Wind Rises" by Tatsuo Hori, "Setting Sun" and "Pandora's Box" by Osamu Dazai, "Eclipse" and "A Moon's Tale" by Keiichiro Hirano, and his translations of Ogai Mori's masterpiece "The Wild Goose" and Yasushi Inoue's timeless masterpiece "A Hunting Rifle" were published by Dar Al Karma.