Synopses & Reviews
This is a disturbing and exhilarating novel in which the anonymous protagonist, a dealer offering a range of the latest chemicals designed to make consumers forget everything, finds his past and present, along with his own identity, disintegrate under the effects of these 'drugs of oblivion'. Set in the very near future, this novel is very much in the style of dystopias like Orwell's 1984, while also evoking the bewildering visual universe of Blade Runner.
The protagonist moves through a world of cynical consumerism, whether in Arizona, South East Asia or Europe, under the constant scrutiny of the Company in whose products he deals. The alienating urban environment that surrounds him intensifies the feeling that he does not belong to any one country or place. His life is spent in transit on deserted motorways or in crowded airports and anonymous hotel rooms, punctuated by business contacts with similarly nameless customers and random, meaningless sexual encounters. There is no place for guilt or personal responsibility in a society in which one's acts are easily forgotten thanks to drugs designed to erase all memories from the mind.
The protagonist speaks with a disarming humor born of his detachment from life, personal relationships and the very consequences of his actions. What makes this vision so alarming is the fact that both its observations and its conclusions are entirely believable.
Review
"By turns dreamlike and disturbing, Loriga's chilling, concise prose shines a dark spotlight on the modern allure of pharmaceuticals' seeming power to assuage all ills. As a portrayal of narcotic dissipation, the novel ranks with William Burroughs' best." Booklist
Review
"[A] gorgeous, enigmatic new novel....Brilliantly marrying style and story." Andrew Sean Greer, Washington Post Book World
Review
"Wow! If Philip K. Dick and Philip Jose Farmer teamed up with William S. Burroughs, the trio might riff out something like this strange and moving novel....[T]he writing is...pithy and thought-provoking." Jim Hopper, San Diego Union-Tribune
Review
"Ray Loriga is an emerging cult writer whose every page oozes genius." Scotland on Sunday (UK)
Review
"Loriga is set to join that select band of writers like Michael Houellebecq and Haruki Murakami who are busy retooling fiction for the twenty-first century." Wayne Burrows, The Big Issue in the North
Review
"Like the rush of an electric guitar riff charging up your spine, Ray Loriga's voice angles, beautifully desperate, to grasp our place in these chaotic times." Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth
Synopsis
A cult figure in Europe and Spain's hottest talent, Ray Loriga has been "hailed as the voice of a new generation" (
Daily Telegraph), impressing the literary world with each new work of his innovative fiction.
With his intense new novel Tokyo Doesn't Love Us Anymore, Loriga lays bare the world we live in, the drug culture that surrounds us, the nature of forgetfulness, and the implacable tyranny of emotions.
Set in the very near future, it is the story of a traveling salesman floating from arid Arizona parking lots to steamy Bangkok bars to peddle the hottest new commodity for a group known only as The Company. What he has is a drug that erases memory. You can choose your oblivion, be it one mistake or a lifetime of pain, but things become hazy when our hero begins sampling the goods and reaches the point where he can't even remember what it is he cannot remember.
A pitch-perfect mood piece for our times, quickened with his graceful and hypnotic prose, Loriga is tackling nothing less than the question of what it means to be human when everything, including human identity, can be bought. This is a novel as compelling as they come from a writer who is not to be forgotten.
Synopsis
Set in the very near future, this is the story of a traveling salesman floating from arid Arizona parking lots to steamy Bangkok bars to peddle the hottest new commodity a drug that erases memory for a group known only as The Company.
About the Author
Ray Loriga was born in 1967. An author, screenwriter, and director, this is his second novel to be published in the United States. Loriga has been published in eleven countries; Tokyo Doesn't Love Us Anymore in eight.