Jackson Alone

Four Black Japanese gay men team up against a culture where discrimination is deep-seated and revenge is just a click away. A searing, darkly funny debut from the Akutagawa Prize–winning author.

Nobody at the corporate offices of Athletius Japan knows much about the massage therapist Jackson—but rumors abound. He used to work as a model. He likes to party. He’s mixed race—half-Japanese, half-somewhere-in-Africa-n. He might be gay. Fueling the gossip is the sudden appearance of a violent pornographic video featuring a man who looks a lot like Jackson.

When Jackson serendipitously meets three other queer mixed-race guys, he learns he’s not the only one being targeted. Together they concoct a plan: find out who’s responsible and, in the meantime, switch identities and play tricks on people—a boyfriend, a boss—who’ve wronged them, exploiting the fact that nobody can seem to tell them apart.

A short, blistering gut punch of a novel, Jackson Alone is at turns satirical and deadpan, angry and tender—a frank exploration of identity, race, queerness, and discrimination in contemporary Japan that announces Jose Ando as a singular new talent in the global literary scene.