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Daniel Clausen
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The Ghosts of Nagasaki Kindle Edition

by Daniel Clausen (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
3.7 out of 5 stars 33 ratings
One night a foreign business analyst in Tokyo sits down in his spacious high rise apartment and begins typing something. The words pour out and exhaust him. He soon realizes that the words appearing on his laptop are memories of his first days in Nagasaki four years ago. Nagasaki was a place full of spirits, a garrulous Welsh roommate, and a lingering mystery. Somehow he must finish the story of four years ago--a story that involves a young Japanese girl, the ghost of a dead Japanese writer, and a mysterious island. He must solve this mystery while maneuvering the hazards of middle management, a cruel Japanese samurai, and his own knowledge that if he doesn't solve this mystery soon his heart will transform into a ball of steel, crushing his soul forever. Though he wants to give up his writing, though he wants to let the past rest, within his compulsive writing lies the key to his salvation.
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  1. Print length
    250 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Accessibility
    Learn more
  4. Publication date
    29 Aug. 2012
  5. File size
    638 KB
  6. Page Flip
    Enabled
  7. Word Wise
    Enabled
  8. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
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Product description

About the Author

Daniel Clausen has published short stories and essays in Slipstream Magazine, Spindrift, Leading Edge, and Zygote in my Coffee, among other journals and magazines. The Ghosts of Nagasaki is his third book. Daniel loves reading emails from friends and fans. You can contact him at: lexicalfunk@gmail.com

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00941Z1T6
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ ghostsofnagasaki.com
  • Accessibility ‏ : ‎ Learn more
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ 29 Aug. 2012
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 638 KB
  • Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 250 pages
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1478314479
  • Page Flip ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Customer reviews:
    3.7 out of 5 stars 33 ratings

About the author

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Daniel Clausen

Daniel Clausen

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Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Daniel has wanted to be a writer ever since he was in elementary school.

He has published stories and articles in such magazines as Slipstream, Black Petals, Spindrift, Zygote in my Coffee, and Leading Edge Science Fiction, among others.

He has written six books: The Sage and the Scarecrow (a novel), The Lexical Funk (a short story collection), Reejecttion (short story/ essay collection), ReejecttIIon -- A Number Two (a short story / essay collection), Something to Stem the Diminishing (a short story collection), and The Ghosts of Nagasaki (a novel).

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3.7 out of 5 stars
33 global ratings

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Top reviews from United Kingdom

  • pooled ink Reviews
    4.0 out of 5 stars an unexpected read
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 March 2017
    pooled ink Reviews:

    I was intrigued when Clausen contacted me about his book. After reading what it was about I let my curiosity push me to accept.

    Perhaps it’s a bit slow to begin for my taste but right when this thought murmurs in my mind everything changes. Like lights winking out across a city an unsettling but curious shift ripples across our protagonist’s life and no longer can the word “mundane” describe what follows.

    Ghosts are everywhere. They are memories that linger and they are something more. They flit through the story giving it something between a literal haunting and a metaphorical statement.

    The protagonist, a foreign business analyst, finds himself strangely compelled to write. His hands reach for his computer and his fingers type the start of something unexpected but demanding to be concluded.

    For the most part he’s unhappy, searching for something he’s not even sure of but living each day the same as before. His raw emotions leak out from the intimate telling of this story and it’s effortless to feel his pain and loss. But it’s not all sadness and gray colors. There are plenty of moments providing blessed comic relief that keep the story moving forwards and alive. This book pulls you to think, tugs you to feel, nudges you to listen. It’s not a particularly long book but it’s not a bit of fluff either.

    Overall I found Clausen’s writing to be skillful, his storytelling compelling, and this book mysterious and enjoyable. I’m glad he crossed my path giving me the chance to read this novel. If you’re looking for an interesting read to accompany that black coffee you guzzle for breakfast then consider THE GHOSTS OF NAGASAKI.
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  • Alison
    5.0 out of 5 stars Challenging journey, but well worth it!
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 October 2015
    Verified Purchase
    This is a difficult book to review for me. It's completely different to anything I have ever read before, and has stayed with me for days since finishing.

    First of all, I will say that I initially struggled with this book. Not through any fault of either the author or the content, I must add. My fault entirely from jumping straight into reading this fresh from finishing another Japanese based novel (my first Murakami) without giving time for the dust to settle.

    In saying that, this is a challenging read of its own accord, and certainly not one to be taken lightly or with any preconceived ideas. Extremely sophisticated without being pretentious or pompous.

    The protagonist is a tormented soul forced to deal with his painful past by the sudden reappearance of the ghosts. Despite the direction and advice he receives from them, he doesn't feel worthy of any kind of forgiveness.

    It's not all doom and gloom though. There are numerous funny scenes from his years in Tokyo, and touching personal moments with individuals.

    This is one book I will definitely read again, as I am sure there are many points I have missed out along the way.

    I recommend this to anyone who is up for a challenging journey, open-minded.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Cole Davis
    5.0 out of 5 stars Literary Debauchery for the Ages
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 February 2016
    My general guideline for awarding 5 stars is that the book is either an outstanding read, with very few irritants, or a very good read with inimitable content. This meets both criteria: it is a very smooth read, at times quite brilliant. The smoothness in particular pertains to metamorphosis in the book. For me, the brilliance is in the humour that runs like a rich vein through a book which deals with mental suffering.

    Perhaps the most effective contrapuntal novel since Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds, the author describes occupational alienation, the feelings of hopelessness of the damaged person and the tensions involved in caring and not being cared for. These themes are interweaved between the narrator’s roaring times in language schools and more sober times in business, themselves punctuated by ghosts and avatars of the past. With a wealth of characters, the recipe is seasoned with hearing voices, fear of bureaucrats, conversation classes, girls in red shoes and a marine crucifixion.

    Religious persecution and other aspects of historical and contemporary Japan provide a richness to this book. Japan is not just described by the western narrator, but finds itself under assault by drunken lecherous English teachers. For me, the humour to be uncovered in great dirty veins makes this book unbeatable. Sometimes this appears in the scurrilous comments of the debauched Welsh teacher of English (and yes, he has an avatar of some considerable style), at other times the narrator’s comments. The contrapuntal aspect is perhaps reified by the comment on the ghosts, “simple people who want to move on with their afterlives”.
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Top reviews from other countries

  • Mike Robbins
    4.0 out of 5 stars A spiritual journey, with spirits
    Reviewed in the United States on 2 July 2015
    Verified Purchase
    A young American financial analyst returns to his Tokyo apartment one evening and begins, for no obvious reason, to write.

    He starts with his arrival in Japan, four years earlier, at the age of 22, to work as an English teacher in Nagasaki. We’re back in a noisy group of heavy-drinking young expat teachers, and our narrator is as smashed as the rest of them. But there is something a little more reflective about him. As he recounts his life as it was in Nagasaki, we learn that he had a childhood and youth back in the USA that he’s never really come to terms with; life in foster-homes, causing trouble as a child, and eventually a foster-parent who did love him, but who he lost. He is, in a sense, dead inside.

    And then he starts to see ghosts – the ghosts of Nagasaki and its past. Why are they following him? Are they real, are they in his imagination, do they want to hurt him, or do they want to help him overcome his past? It slowly becomes apparent that some of them, at least, want to help. But it might be too late.

    Daniel Clausen’s The Ghosts of Nagasaki is basically magic realism. It’s a genre I don’t dislike but have probably read enough of. You start to suspect that people write magic realism because it’s easier than realism (plot a bit stuck? Stick in a flying pink pig. Character doesn’t quite work? Convert them into an angel). Still, over the last year or so I have read two or three such books that really were good. This is one of them. In this book, magic realism isn’t pure self-indulgence by the writer; Clausen’s ghosts aren’t arbitrary. They’re products of Nagasaki’s history. What that history did to them, and to their characters, is what ties them to the main character’s own spiritual journey. This gives the book a certain depth, and a genuine narrative cohesion.

    Although the book’s themes are quite heavy, the book itself isn’t; it’s a good read. Clausen’s characters are strong. In particular, as someone who’s worked abroad a lot, I think he’s good at capturing the atmosphere that surrounds hard-drinking young expat English teachers. Younger development volunteers can be much the same. They’ve thrown off the constraints of home and are out in the world, and are often pretty anarchic. The boozing is only part of this; it’s a way of thinking. Clausen gets this quite well with the narrator’s British flatmate. You also sense an innate feeling for the rhythms of life in Japan and the way they contrast with the narrator’s own.

    I nearly gave this book five stars, but I couldn’t quite. The Ghosts of Nagasaki isn’t perfect. Clausen leaves the odd plotline hanging. Here and there he piques our interest in a character and then abandons them. Also, though it’s mostly well-paced, it can slow down a bit now and then, especially in the first half. Besides, to really convince me as a writer, Clausen would have to produce a book that tells a story as good without the magic and the ghosts.

    But I suspect he’d be well able to do so. In the meantime, The Ghosts of Nagasaki is an interesting and original book. Recommended.
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  • Tom Walsh
    5.0 out of 5 stars Re wiring history
    Reviewed in the United States on 27 July 2017
    Verified Purchase
    This novel, to me, is an offering to Art. The plot is, creatively, written in fragments- past and present are chopped into slivers of honey-colored ice crystals, presented to us on that stage called memory. It describes innocents abroad in Nagasaki, adrift much as those who were expatriates of Paris in the 20s. The have Names reminiscent of Runyon and Brecht: Jimmie from Jersey, Catwoman and The Welshman. I'm not going to describe the plot because the author seems not to care about plot, only about coincidence and Karma and the lessons we learn simply by seeing, by listening, by longing. This is a surprise to read, told in a quirky first person, diaristic in nature and burns of lost dreams and smoky memories.
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  • aAlabamaDill
    2.0 out of 5 stars Somewhat fuzzy
    Reviewed in the United States on 14 October 2021
    Verified Purchase
    Somewhat fuzzy and wandering, self absorbed and seemingly written as a spiritual soul journey. I couldn't find it rewarding enough to make it worth the time. A bit like a more self absorbed JD Salinger. If you are looking for advanced navel gazing and mystic contemplation this might be for you.
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  • blueotter
    4.0 out of 5 stars If You Enjoy Murakami and Dreamy, Surreal Books
    Reviewed in the United States on 31 March 2013
    Verified Purchase
    The Ghosts of Nagasaki by Daniel Clausen reminded me in some ways of folk art. Not following any particular school or rules of writing, and feeling fresh and spontaneous. However, I suspect it would frustrate a number of readers who like their plot linear. As a friend said in recommending this, if you enjoy reading Haruki Murakami, you've got the right mindset. If a first person stream of consciousness narrative of what often becomes dreamy and surreal doesn't suit, you'll probably want to take a pass.

    Nagasaki was bombed after Hiroshima, and those ghosts haunt the book, but the principal ghosts seem to be both memories and guides, bringing back pieces of his life to the young narrator and trying to help get him where he needs to go (he can be stubborn, though). He's acquired a heavy heart over his brief life, and wants to lift it, but doesn't know how. Due to an entrepreneurial friend, he's a financial analyst in Nagasaki who also teaches business English to the local employees. His narration skips around in time, mostly over a four year period, as well as geographically to Tokyo and the U.S. He was a foster child growing up, repeatedly mistreated until he met up with a kindred spirit foster mother, Debra - who grows ill and dies. He's now adrift, trying to find his way, going out with his similarly searching expat friends to nomi-hodai (all you can drink) bashes, singing karaoke, trying to ditch work, and obsessively typing up this narrative.

    An excerpt:

    * * *

    It’s a week before payday and the weather has gotten colder. Quickly approaching the state of absolutely broke, the Welshman and I have resorted to drinking cheap beer in our apartment and reminiscing about our pasts. Bad news, because whenever the past comes up, the ghost of Debra appears out of nowhere, sits down to take a load off, and starts talking in vague terms about problems―mine mostly, but sometimes just “problems.”

    “You’ve got problems, I’ve got problems, the whole world’s got problems,” she says.

    “Sometimes I think if we didn’t have these problems the whole world would stop spinning on her axis, we’d all stop spinning on our axises, axes, or whatever you want to call them, and then we’d have to settle into the nasty business of finding a way to be happy.”

    I listen to her, sip my beer, and try to imagine what in the after-earth kind of problems a ghost would have.

    And, because she can read my mind, she says, “Oh Lordy, you have no idea, young man. Life ends, but politics, well…” She leaves it at that. Then she checks her watch, as if she has somewhere to be.

    More haunting to do? I ask, speechlessly.

    She shrugs, “Or something.”

    * * *

    There may come a time when you may find yourself saying, oh, I see where this is going, and figuring it's going to turn into a simplistic fable despite its crazy quilt format. Luckily it dodges that fate and remains interesting and, for me, brain-opening, all the way to its thoughtful end. At one point he follows red shoes, any red shoes, wherever they will take him, and it turns out they take him somewhere worth going, to someone worth meeting. And in the context of the narrative his doing so is not at all surprising. What is surprising is that this is a creative, well-written book, generally clear of clunkers, that seems to be available in the USA only on Kindle, and at a bargain price of 99 cents. I would expect it to be better-known, pricier, and more widely available. Maybe it will be down the road.
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  • Tony Parsons
    4.0 out of 5 stars A very awesome book cover
    Reviewed in the United States on 9 August 2017
    Verified Purchase
    Tokyo, Japan. (22, narrator) roommate is Mikey “Mike” (Welsh).
    Other employees are: Randy Andy (Aussie-Grunge), Makiko (f, new staff member), Jim (Jersey), Masahiro (m), Koshiro (m), English Jules, & Scotlandman.
    They are all going to a club hosting a Halloween party in Shianbashi, Nagasaki’s red-light district.
    Bill wants narrator to have a ESL class for all the newbies.
    Narrator’s company is sending him to Nagasaki to investigate an English conversation school chain. Bill is the mgr.

    What became of Debra (Australian regional mgr.)?

    I did not receive any type of compensation for reading & reviewing this book. While I receive free books from publishers & authors, I am under no obligation to write a positive review. Only an honest one.

    A very awesome book cover, great font & writing style. A fairly well written paranormal mystery book. It wasn’t very easy for me to read/follow from start/finish, but never a dull moment. There were no grammar/typo errors, nor any repetitive or out of line sequence sentences. Lots of exciting scenarios, with several twists/turns & a great set of unique characters to keep track of. This could also make another great paranormal mystery movie, or better yet a mini TV series. I’m not real sure I grasped the whole story content so I will only rate it at 4/5 stars.

    Thank you for the free author; Goodreads; MakingConnections; Amazon Digital Services LLC; book
    Tony Parsons MSW (Washburn)
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