Love at Six Thousand Degrees
WINNER OF THE MISHIMA YUKIO PRIZE
A WORLD LITERATURE TODAY NOTABLE BOOK 2023
An ordinary housewife finds herself haunted by visions of a mushroom cloud and abruptly leaves her husband and son to travel alone to the city of Nagasaki, where she soon begins an affair with a young half-Russian, half-Japanese man.
Inspired by Marguerite Duras's screenplay for "Hiroshima, Mon Amour," this novel is a further demonstration of Kashimada's distinctive literary style and technique and her commitment to plumbing the depths of her characters' psychology. Dealing with the travails and traumas of history, with gendered identity, with the tension between private and public selves, Love at Six Thousand Degrees is a distinctive and intriguing novel by one of Japan's most unique contemporary authors.
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Maki Kashimada's first novel Two won the 1998 Bungei Prize. Since then, she has established herself as a writer of literary fiction and become known for her avant-garde style. In 2005 she received the Mishima Yukio Prize for Love at Six Thousand Degrees. She was nominated three times for the Akutagawa Prize before ultimately garnering the award in 2012 with Touring the Land of the Dead. One of her best-known works is The Kingdom of Zero (2009), which reworks Dostoevsky's The Idiot into the tale of a saintly idiot in Japan. She has been a follower of the Japanese Orthodox Church since high school and was married to a member of its clergy.
Praise for Touring the Land of the Dead (and Ninety-Nine Kisses)
"Magical."--The Guardian, Most Anticipated Fiction of 2021
"A delicate, layered exploration of family, trauma, and memory [ . . . ] An intriguing introduction to a significant voice in contemporary Japanese fiction."--Kirkus Reviews
"Maki Kashimada writes about one woman's trauma with razor-perfect concision and an austere beauty [ . . . ] Haydn Trowell's unobtrusive translation leaves room for Kashimada's prose as she reflects on family, memory, and identity."--Asian Review of Books
"Kashimada's allusive, outward-facing work insists on placing her fiction squarely within the context of world literature and thought."--Literary Hub
"An ethereal novel combining two tales exploring memory, love, and loss."--Vogue (UK)
"Only Ms. Kashimada can create this kind of world."--Yoko Ogawa, author of The Memory Police
"Thought-provoking and lingering."--Osusume Books
"A compelling voice and vision. Touring the land of the Dead & Ninety-Nine Kisses is a very lively and quite charming family-tale."--The Complete Review
"An unusual love story that simply works [ . . . ] let's hope we see more of Kashimada's work in English very soon."--Tony's Reading List
"I loved [how] Touring the Land of the Dead was so character driven and how the past, emotions, and trauma played such a significant role throughout."--Where There's Ink There's Paper
"Kashimada's writing is exceptional; this collection is dark and suffocating. It is part of a trend in Japan of female authors rewriting traditional and well-loved stories through a feminist lens, and is a welcome addition to the works by Japanese women being translated into English."--The Spectator
"While Kashimada's stories, like Murakami's, resist easy interpretation, the former revel in the beauty of experience, whether sorrowful or joyous, affirming life in all its strangeness, horror and mystery."--The Times Literary Supplement (UK)
"Two polished novellas, though different in mood, probe family relationships with insight and elegance."--Tatler (UK)
