This is a short Japanese novel about an architect who builds a tower to house criminals. The tower is not a prison but a good quality housing block. The term Homo Miserabilis has been adopted to refer to these people, in contrast to Homo Felix for the rest of the population. This distinction is an attempt to recognise that they are not entirely in control of their own destiny, and to elicit sympathy for them.
The architect mentions a few times that she is able to see the future, which seems to just mean that she is visualising the tower after it has been built. This is contrasted with the residents of the tower who apparently are unable to visualise their own futures due to their upbringing. Unfortunately we never actually see the residents of the tower; there are no characters which are Homo Miserabilis. This is a problem throughout the book, where ideas and themes are present but then not explored in any meaningful way. The theme that is explored the most is around words, and how they are tied to culture and thoughts. Also how changing the name of something can actually change the thing itself. At one point it is mentioned that the residents aren’t allowed to use certain words or ways of speaking to help them change their thought patterns. We never see the effects though, we never really see any characters facing this. The whole book feels very patronising towards the characters that are supposed to be receiving sympathy.
I wouldn’t normally have an issue with a book not exploring thought provoking themes, but that’s all that was there. There is no plot to speak of, first there is no tower and then we skip forward and now there is a tower. There are a handful of characters who are all constantly going on long rambling monologues, either in their own head or supposedly in conversation with someone else. The book is short, and yet it feels very slowly paced.