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Review: Battle Royale, by Koushun Takami


Trigger warning: If you're sensitive to the violence you should not read this book.


What an epic work of art. It's full of violence, death and cruelty. It's a craziness.


I wanted to read it because is the novel that inspired Suzanne Collins to write her trilogy The Hunger Games (I haven't read these books yet), and I have no words to describe it, it's a bloodbath, you get tired of reading how everyone is murdered but deep inside you want more, you can't stop reading it.


Also the story's context and situation are perfectly explained. Koushun Takami describes in detail a dystopian futuristic world where countries are mostly divided between the Empire of the United States and the Great Republic of East Asia, dominated by Japan.


The Battle Royale (developed in the book) carried out by the Japanese is kind of a "survival of the strongest", as Charles Darwin explains in his work The Origin of Species. My think is that Takami based his first idea of the book on Darwin's essay. It's an interesting point of view.


Reflection: So the Japanese Government carry out these battles to clean the country of those who are not strong enough to survive under siege (the one that's making the same government), they want obedient citizens, whom don't ask about the tasks, the rules nor the decisions of the regime; the only thing they're wanted for is to lower their heads in front of the power and to work for the leading ones. Everything while 42 students kill each other to survive.


It's such a great book.



Genre: dystopian, young-adult, horror.

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