The Bear and the Paving Stone
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, three dream-like tales of memory and war: part of our Japanese novella series, showcasing the best contemporary Japanese writing
A Japanese man, far from home, travels the countryside of Normandy with a friend - talking about war, literature, and everything in between. As his ideas of his life become more entangled with his personal writing, the pangs of his past and his half-forgotten memories overlap and threaten his peace.
Owing a debt to French writers from La Fontaine to Proust, the three fable-like tales in The Bear and the Paving Stone are stories of loss, memory and a longing to belong.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Horie weaves fables out of everyday existence in these three captivating tales of relationships and lives revisited. In the title story, a translator travels to a remote village in Normandy to visit an old friend and finds serendipitous connections to the people, places, and stories he encounters. In "The Sandman is Coming," a man visits the seaside with his dead friend's sister. While reminiscing, the narrator suggests that they travel with her child to places he'd written about to his dying friend. "Just the three of us?" the woman asks. The narrator's response, "Is there anyone else?" reveals the theme that while some things wash away, the connections that remain become anchors. In the final story, "In the Old Castle," one man's memory of his youthful transgression of breaking and entering turns into an allegory about the force of fear itself. Across these ruminative stories, Horie suddenly drops in moments of piercing wisdom and revelation, revealing that, for better or worse, there is no escape from one's memory.
