Cover 5

Into the Forbidden Zone

Into the Forbidden Zone

A Trip through Hell and High Water in Post-earthquake Japan

Ratings2

Average rating4

15

The tone is whimsical and tragicomic; Vollman lingers on things such as the weird (and almost incomprehensible) units of measurement for things like radiation poisoning. (I assume he was also making a larger point about the Japanese government intentionally obfuscating details of the nuclear reactor explosion.) Overall, an absorbing, too-brief account of Vollman's explorations in the post-disaster Japanese countryside. This could have been a full book, and I wish it had been. As such, it felt abbreviated.

June 26, 2012