Moju: The Blind Beast

Book excerpt: In Edogawa Rampo’s "Moju: The Blind Beast", a deranged, scarred and sightless sculptor kidnaps a model and imprisons her in a psychedelic labyrinth of giant sculpted eyes and other outlandish body parts, before dismembering her in a fearful blood-orgy. Her limbs, head and torso are later found scattered throughout Tokyo. The blind killer continues his sexually-charged spree of amputation and decapitation, claiming several more victims before finally presenting his work at an acclaimed art exhibition in which the sculptures are a little too life-like for comfort... The most disturbing of Rampo’s novels, "Moju: The Blind Beast" is a classic of grinding horror and weird sex, tainted with a virulent black humour. It represents one of the earliest literary examples of the Japanese “erotic-grotesque” genre, in which such subjects as dismemberment, mutilation, coprophilia and cannibalism are presented in a perverse sexual context. This is a special ebook presentation of the first-ever English translation of Rampo’s classic.