Flowers of Grass (Japanese Literature Series) - Softcover

Fukunaga, Takehiko; Tyler, Royall

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1564787141 ISBN 13: 9781564787149

Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press, 2012

Synopsis

Outside Tokyo, a tuberculosis sanatorium in the village of K has a six-bed ward that the narrator, an aspiring poet, shares with a student of linguistics and budding writer named Shiomi. After the stubborn Shiomi insists on undergoing a dangerous surgical procedure and dies in the process, two notebooks turn up in his bed-sheets. Flowers of Grass unfolds as the narrator reads them, asking himself if Shiomi s death was a sort of suicide, and learning the details of his late friend s two great loves: for a brother and sister, both of whom reject him.

Fukunaga himself spent seven years recuperating from tuberculosis following World War II, and drew on his own experiences to create a fully realized portrait of a young man of fastidious intelligence and great sorrow, and how it is possible, seeing reality from the side of death and despair, to still choose life.

About this title

About the Author:

Royall Tyler has a B.A. in Far Eastern Languages from Harvard, and an M.A. in Japanese History and Ph.D. in Japanese literature from Columbia University. He has taught Japanese language and culture at, among other places, Ohio State University, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of Oslo, in Norway.

About this edition

• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1564787141
• ISBN 13: 9781564787149
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 328