# Villain

- Author: Shuichi Yoshida
- Translator: Philip Gabriel
- Original title (Japanese): 悪人
- First published: 2007
- Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
- This edition: 2011
- ISBN: 9780307454942
- Shelf: Japanese Literature in Translation

## Card

A young woman is found dead at a remote mountain pass in southern Japan, and the story moves among the people whose lives touched hers.  
Each chapter shifts to a new voice, family, friends, or strangers, so sympathy keeps sliding in unexpected directions.  
For a night drive along an empty coast.  

## About this book

In a corner of Kyushu, an insurance saleswoman goes out one winter night and does not come home. The police soon have a suspect, but the book is more interested in everyone around the crime: a grieving father, a lonely grandmother, a woman in a menswear shop who longs for someone to talk to. Moving through love hotels, seaside towns, and lighthouses, it asks who in such a story deserves the word villain.

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- Book page (samples and where to buy): https://nijuyoji-bookstore.pages.dev/b/9780307454942/
- Title and author checked against Open Library (2026-10-27). No prices or stock.
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- Nijuyoji Bookstore (https://nijuyoji-bookstore.pages.dev/). Book data: Open Library and Google Books.
