"Kingdom of Hope" by Ryu Murakami

Ryu Murakami's "Kingdom of Hope" is a tale of decadence, destruction and just possibly, hope. It's my second encounter with Murakami since "Coin Locker Babies". Told from the point of view of a magazine reporter, the story spins around a group of junior high dropouts with a concrete plan to turn the game of adults on its head- innovatively making use of modern day inventions (i.e. the Internet, media, forex etc.) to strip the complacent, smart alec adults of their sense of dominance- and take the future in their own hands. In a way, it's Joseph Schumpeter's idea of creative destruction being played out in a darwinian scenario in which the adults is the dying breed. In a mature capitalistic world where morality and values have been shaken to their very cores and the building blocks of society are crumpling down in an ever-increasing pace, a desire for radical changes is definitely brewing. The problem is who will take charge. As authority-led social transformations tend to reinforce the corrupted power-sects in one way or another, the idea of having junior high students helm the course of social reengineering or even a full-blown revolution doesn't sound so far off the mark. I'm only half way through the book, but I'm hooked and fast becoming a fan.