Dark Room - Hardcover

Yoshiyuki, Junnosuke

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0870112554 ISBN 13: 9780870112553

Publisher: Kodansha America, Inc, 1997

Synopsis

Fine cloth copy in an equally fine dw. Particularly and surprisingly well-preserved; tight, bright, clean and especially sharp-cornered. ; 170 pages; Description: 170 p. ; 22 cm. Translation of Anshitsu.

About this title

Review:

Known in Japan for his translations of the maverick Henry Miller Yoshiyuki here makes the territory of the master his own. Shuichi Nakata is a writer--clearly the author (the lack of critical distance in the writing is reminiscent of both Miller and Bukowski as is the overall style)--whose sexual meanderings and existential ennui draw us casually through a languorous, almost negligent, narrative. A woman, Natsue, begins to beguile and then obsess our narrator. The story starts to focus as Nakata's feelings for Natsue intensify. Yoshiyuki won the Japanese equivalent of the Booker, the Tanizaki Prize, for this lucid, erotic short novel. Despite its worryingly misogynistic overtones (again like Miller and Bukowski) Yoshiyuki's understanding of the incessantness that defines love and defies sense, and his ability to frame and articulate that confusion, marks him out as an artist of note. The Dark Room encourages the need to place modern Japanese literature on writing's world stage. --Mark Thwaite

About this edition

• Publisher: Kodansha America, Inc
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0870112554
• ISBN 13: 9780870112553
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 200