The Manchurian Candidate meets South Park—Chuck Palahniuk’s finest novel since the generation-defining Fight Club.

"Begins here first account of operative me, agent number 67 on arrival Midwestern American airport greater _____ area. Flight _____. Date _____. Priority mission top success to complete. Code name: Operation Havoc."

Thus speaks Pygmy, one of a handful of young adults from a totalitarian state sent to the United States, disguised as exchange students, to live with typical American families and blend in, all the while planning an unspecified act of massive terrorism.

Palahniuk depicts Midwestern life through the eyes of this thoroughly indoctrinated little killer, who hates Americans with a passion, in this cunning double-edged satire of an American xenophobia that might, in fact, be completely justified. For Pygmy and his fellow operatives are cooking up something big, something truly awful, that will bring this big dumb country and its fat dumb inhabitants to their knees.

It’s a comedy. And a romance.

Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche is a powerful work of journalistic literature by the acclaimed author Haruki Murakami. On a clear spring day, Monday, March 20, 1995, five members of the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo conducted a chemical warfare attack on the Tokyo subway system using sarin, a poison gas twenty-six times as deadly as cyanide.

The unthinkable had happened: a major urban transit system had become the target of a terrorist attack. In this compelling investigation, Murakami delves into the minds of those who lived through the catastrophe—from a Subway Authority employee dealing with survivor guilt, to a fashion salesman harboring more resentment towards the media than the perpetrators, to a young cult member who condemns the attack yet remains with Aum.

Through these diverse voices, Murakami exposes intriguing facets of the Japanese psyche. As he uncovers the fundamental issues leading to the attack, readers achieve a clear vision of an event that could occur anytime, anywhere. Hauntingly compelling and inescapably important, this book provides a profound insight into a tragic event on Japanese soil that reverberated around the world.