I’m a fan of Nishio Ishin style of writing, I like the ambiguity, wordplay and storytelling.
I was wondering if anyone else had other authors they could recommend that have peculiar/interesting writing styles?
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I had to look up Nishio (西尾 維新 for anyone else who wasn’t sure 
) and while I’m familiar with tv adaptations of some of their work, I haven’t read any of it. So, just in terms of “interesting writing styles”: Both 江戸川乱歩 and 太宰治 have writing styles that are very unique and that I’m a complete sucker for. Both are classic authors, so comfort with old kanji/grammar/vocab/etc is a must, but 太宰 has such a poetic, evocative style that pulls you into the emotion of a story. I’ve only read his short stories thus far, and plan to read more in the future, but I’m always impressed by his way with words.
乱歩 just brings out a childish delight in old fashioned detective stories. I grew up reading Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and the like, so his way of writing, the style of villians, the contrived plots - I adore it. I remember reading 怪人二十面相 and being so tickled by him addressing the reader directly as 読者諸君.
横山秀夫 also had a very interesting writing style. Very carefully thought out details about people’s appearances, rooms, ways of speech, demeanor, etc. Just jam packed with tidy little descriptions.
Example:
灯のせいもあろうが、顔には皺の数だけ疲労の影が落ちていた。
However I’ve only read one of his books so far, so don’t know if that is equally true for all of them.
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Thanks for the recommendations.
I had a scroll through some of those authors books. 64 | 36 and 人間失格 | 39 in particular caught my attention so ill be sure to check those out.
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I’m not advanced enough to read books on this level yet so I haven’t got any recommendations for you — however I’ve been wanting to add some Nishio Ishin books to my wishlist, but he has so many books I’m not sure where to begin. Which books of his do you like the best? Are there any in particular you would recommend? Sorry to hijack your thread.
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Woops, i deleted my original reply….
Yeah he’s written quite alot of different series. I think he’s written over 50 books so far and he’s only 41 
I’ve only read books from his 物語 | 39 series (currently reading the 7th vol), so I can only speak for those. I like listening to the audiobooks for the series too… I think theres 20 released so far with a new one being released on audible every month.
He won the Mephisto Prize for the first novel of the 戯言シリーズ so that could be worth checking out too.
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Thank you for the recommendation! The premise of 物語 sounds interesting, I will definitely check it out.
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