
Touring the Land of the Dead (and Ninety-Nine Kisses)
Haydn Trowell
(Translator)Description
From one of Japan's rising literary stars, two mesmerizing novellas told with stylistic inventiveness and breathtaking sensitivity about memory, loss, and love.
Touring the Land of the Dead tells the story of Taichi, who was forced to stop working almost a decade ago and since then he and his wife Natsuko have been getting by on her part-time wages. But Natsuko is a woman accustomed to hardship. When her own family's fortune dried up for years during her childhood, she, her brother, and her mother lived a surreal hand-to-mouth existence shaped by her mother's refusal to accept their new station in life.
One day, Natsuko sees an ad for a spa and recognizes the place as the former luxury hotel that Natsuko's grandfather had taken her mother to when she was little. She decides to take her damaged husband to the spa, despite the cost, but their time there triggers hard but ultimately redemptive memories relating to the complicated history of her family and a reconciliation with her husband.
Modeled on The Makioka Sisters, Junichiro Tanizaki's classic story, Ninety-Nine Kisses portrays in touching and lyrical fashion the lives of the four unmarried sisters in a historical, close-knit neighborhood of contemporary Tokyo. An atmospheric and captivating tail of siblings and women's lives.
Product Details
Publisher | Europa Editions |
Publish Date | April 06, 2021 |
Pages | 144 |
Language | English |
Type | |
EAN/UPC | 9781609456511 |
Dimensions | 8.2 X 5.3 X 0.4 inches | 0.3 pounds |
About the Author
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 6,000 Degrees Celsius, a novel set in Nagasaki and based on Hiroshima mon amour by Marguerite Duras, and in 2007 she took the Noma Prize for New Writers for Picardy Third. 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.
Haydn Trowell is a literary translator who specializes in contemporary Japanese fiction, and the translator of Maki Kashimada' Akutagawa Prize-winning novel Touring the Land of the Dead. He holds a doctorate in translation studies and literary stylistics from Monash University, Australia.
Reviews
"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)
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