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Yen Press Licenses Honobu Yonezawa's Award-Winning Black Dungeon Castle Novel
posted on by Rafael Antonio Pineda
Yen Press announced on Monday that it has licensed mystery writer Honobu Yonezawa's Black Dungeon Castle (Kokurōjō) novel, and will release it on print and digital in June 2023. Yen Press describes the novel:
The winter of 1578, four years prior to the Honnnoji Incident. Araki Murashige has betrayed his ally Oda Nobunaga and holed up in Arioka Castle—but a string of strange incidents within the castle walls has him at his wits' end. The desperate warlord's only hope in solving these mysteries is imprisoned in the castle's dungeon: a man named Kuroda Kanbei, one of Oda's most gifted strategists. When all the conflict and intrigue reach their end, what will Murashige and Kuroda have up their sleeves?
Yonezawa and Kadokawa published the novel in June 2021. The novel won the Naoki Prize (a biannual Japanese literary award for new and rising authors)., and won Kadokawa's 2021 Fūtarō Yamada award. It also ranked #1 in the Mystery ga Yomitai!, Shūkan Bunshun Mystery Best 10, Kono Mystery ga Sugoi!, and Honkaku Mystery Best 10 guidebooks for 2022, and is the first to place at #1 in all four rankings. It ranked at #1 in Rekishi/Jidai Shōsetsu Best 3 (Historical/Period Novels Best 3) award from Asahi Shimbun's Weekly Asahi magazine in 2021.
Yonezawa is perhaps best known for his Kotenbu (Classic Literature Club) novel series began with Hyōka, the first novel, in 2001. The Credit Roll of the Fool (Gusha no Endroll) novel then followed in 2002, The Kudryavka Sequence (Kudryavka no Junban) in 2005, The Doll that Took a Detour (Toomawari Suru Hiyoko) in 2007, Approximating the Distance Between Two People (Futari no Kyori no Gaisan) in 2010, and Imasara Tsubasa o Iwaretemo in November 2016.
Kyoto Animation and late director Yasuhiro Takemoto adapted some of the stories in the series into a 22-episode television anime series titled Hyōka in 2012. The novels also inspired a manga in Kadokawa's Monthly Shōnen Ace magazine.
Yonezawa wrote the Shōshimin mystery novel series that has had several manga adaptations, including Anko Manjūya's Shunki Gentei Ichigo Tart Jiken (The Case of the Springtime Limited-Edition Strawberry Tart).
Source: Press release
Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more of the companies mentioned in this article are part of the Kadokawa Group of Companies.
Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. Yen Press, BookWalker Global, and J-Novel Club are subsidiaries of KWE.
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