Battle Royale - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

is a 1999

1999 in literature

The year 1999 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*June 19 - Stephen King is hit by a Dodge van while taking a walk. He spends the next three weeks hospitalized...

Japanese novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

written by Koushun Takami

Koushun Takami

is the author of the novel Battle Royale, originally published in Japanese, and later translated into English by Yuji Oniki and published by Viz Media and, later, in an expanded edition by Haika Soru, a division of Viz Media....

. The story tells of schoolchildren who are forced to fight each other to the death.

The novel has been adapted into a film

Battle Royale (film)

is a 2000 Japanese film directed by Kinji Fukasaku based on the novel of the same name. It was written by Kenta Fukasaku and stars Takeshi Kitano. The film aroused international controversy.A sequel, Battle Royale II: Requiem, followed...

and a manga

Battle Royale (manga)

is a serialized manga, written by Koushun Takami and Masayuki Taguchi. It is based on the novel of the same name, and was published in Japan by Akita Publishing. The manga consists of 15 volumes and is distributed in English by Tokyopop. There is a second manga called Battle Royale II: Blitz Royale...

series, and translated into Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Norwegian, and Hungarian.
Battle Royale takes place in an alternate timeline—Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

is a member region of a totalitarian

Totalitarianism

Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...

state known as the Republic of Greater East Asia (大東亜共和国 Dai Tōa Kyōwakoku).