Loop (Ring #3)

Originally published in Japan as Rupu by Kadokawa Shoten, Tokyo, 1998

Stunning Japanese novel with a chilling twist – the follow-up to Ring & Spiral.

Kaoru's father, Hideyuki, lies dying in a Tokyo hospital, his body ravaged by viral cancer. This nightmarish incurable disease has sprung out of nowhere & has begun to affect organisms all over the planet.

Twenty years ago Hideyki worked on a virtual reality project which replicated evolution on earth, called the Loop. The project failed when the organisms within it inexplicably stopped reproducing normally & started cloning. Nearly all of the other scientists who worked on the Loop are already dead – from cancer.

To get to the heart of the mystery, Kaoru must travel to the other side of the planet, to the Mojave desert. The secret he encounters there will overturn everything he thought he knew about the world – and his own identity.

In this suspense-filled follow-up to ‘Ring’ & ‘Spiral’, Suzuki masterfully confounds the reader with a stunning new twist on the Ring mythology.    

Koji Suzuki was born in 1957 in Hamamatsu, southwest of Tokyo. He attended Keio University where he majored in French. Suzuki also has translated a children’s book into Japanese, The Little Sod Diaries by the crime novelist Simon Brett.  

In 1990 Suzuki’s first full-length work Rakuen (Paradise), won the Japanese Fantasy Novel Award & launched his career as a fiction writer. Ring, written with a baby on his lap, catapulted him to fame, selling 2.3 million copies in Japan alone, and the sequels Spiral & Loop cemented his reputation as a world-class talent. Often called the ‘Stephen King of Japan’, Suzuki has played a crucial role in establishing mainstream credentials for horror novels in his own country. He is based in Tokyo, but loves to travel.

Glynne Walley is an Associate Professor of Japanese Literature at the University of Oregon & author of