Battle Royale

In an alternate, authoritarian Japan — the Republic of Greater East Asia — the government runs a secret annual "Program": a randomly chosen class of junior-high students is shipped to a remote island, fitted with explosive collars, handed a bag of random weapons, and ordered to kill one another until only one remains. Escape is impossible; refuse to play and the collar detonates.

When the forty-two students of Shiroiwa Junior High's Class B realize what has happened to them, friendships, crushes, and old rivalries curdle into terror. Some resolve to fight, some to hide, some to trust one another and look for a way out — while others embrace the game with chilling enthusiasm. At the center are Shuya Nanahara and Noriko Nakagawa, who cling to their humanity, and the enigmatic transfer student Shogo Kawada, who seems to know more than he should.

Koushun Takami's Battle Royale is a notorious, propulsive dystopian thriller and a savage satire of conformity, authority, and the cruelty of forced competition. Bloody and relentless, it became a cult phenomenon and a touchstone for the entire "death game" genre.