★New work for 2025 by an author with a Ph.D. in engineering! The first book to interpret literature through a scientific thinking, offering a fresh and powerful cross-disciplinary perspective!
★Highly endorsed by Japan’s popular educational YouTuber “Takumi,” who describes it as “embodying all the strengths and weaknesses of science,” striking a chord with countless science-minded readers～
★Read fiction like solving puzzles, use “approximation” to understand difficult texts, and clarify narrative and perspective traps—specially dedicated to those who find “novels too difficult”!

The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka), One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel García Márquez), To the Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf), This Is a Pen (Enjō Tō)…

Using classic and modern literary works from around the world as examples, Ōtaki Heita—a writer with a background in science—offers a collection of reading essays that interpret fiction through a scientific lens.

Who really decides the “genre” of a novel?
Why are “meta-novels” so hard to get into?
What exactly is the difference between “first-person” and “third-person” narration?

By introducing perspectives from physics, mathematics, and other scientific fields into these literary questions, the structure of fiction becomes strikingly clear.

For example: What happens when we read Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and The Castle through thermodynamics? Why can mystery novels be “solved”?
Why do some texts feel distinctly “fictional”?... This book uses a variety of scientific approaches to analyze literature, delving into the great mystery of “why a mere collection of words becomes a ‘novel’.”

In other words, this is a reading experience that uses scientific methods to respond to the question: “Why is fiction compelling?”

Highly recommended for those who have always avoided fiction because it seemed “too difficult”—this is a reading guide like no other.

Ōtaki Heita

Writer. Born in 1986 in Awaji City, Hyōgo Prefecture. Completed doctoral coursework at Kyoto University Graduate School of Engineering (Doctoral Program).
In 2018, received the 1st Awa Shirasagi Literary Award for Aoi wa Ao yori mo Aoshi (“Blue is Even Bluer Than Indigo”).
Contributed the short story “Samusa’s Wings” to the anthology Abnormal Theses (edited by Kyōsuke Higuchi, Hayakawa Publishing).
Actively publishes short fiction in literary magazines such as SF Magazine, and also works as a translator of novels, including works by Shōyetsu Ogawa such as The End of the Street and Like Smoke, Like Light.
Do Not Solve That Mystery is his first mystery novel and debut work.

Foreword: Back When I Was Still a “Science Person”

■ Lecture Section
【Session 1】“Solving” Novels (Part 1)—Kafka’s Works and Thermodynamics
【Session 2】“Solving” Novels (Part 2)—Forces at Work in Fiction
【Session 3】“Approximating” Novels—How to Read “Hard-to-Understand Fiction”?
【Session 4】“Applying” Novels (Part 1)—Fiction as a “Game”!?
【Session 5】“Applying” Novels (Part 2)—Solvable and Unsolvable Mysteries
【Session 6】“Reading” Novels (Part 1)—“Knowledge” Through “Noise”
【Session 7】“Reading” Novels (Part 2)—Is Fiction Useful?
【Session 8】“Fictionalizing” Fiction—A Dangerous Reading Experience?
【Final Session】“Writing” Fiction—Novels Are Actually Simple!

Cross-Disciplinary Column: The Aesthetics of Manual Calculation / Strange Evolution Theories / Human-Like Obsessiveness

■ Practice Section
Criminal Records of Writers—An Essay on Speculative Mystery
The Disembodied “I”—Yūsei Takiguchi’s “Expanded I-Novel”