#23 in Dystopian
Battle Royale
- 624
- Pages
- about 11 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“Battle Royale” is a brutal dystopian horror that gives a face even to pupils who last a single chapter. Over more than six hundred pages a totalitarian state forces junior high students to kill one another, and the deaths are graphic enough that some readers have to pause. Others find the prose clumsy and the cast too large to follow. Best for those with a strong stomach who want survival fiction at its bleakest.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Battle Royale is a Japanese dystopian horror novel by journalist Koushun Takami. Battle Royale is the first and only novel from Takami and was originally completed in 1996 but was not published until 1999. The book tells the story of junior high school students who are forced to fight each other to the death in a program run by a fictional fascist, totalitarian Japanese government known as the Republic of Greater East Asia.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.1 across 381 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 72% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Dystopian average of 7.7. That is how 8.0 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.9 | 22 | 6% |
| Hardcover | 8.1 | 359 | 94% |
Frequently asked
How long is Battle Royale?
It has 624 pages — longer than 96% of the ranked books in Dystopian.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Dystopian — with scores between 7.5 and 8.4, closest to this book.
