<p/><br></br><p><b> About the Book </b></p></br></br>This is the Japanese <i>Catcher in the Rye</i> for the 21st Century.<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br><p>Twenty-year-old Taguchi Hiro has spent the last two years of his life living as a hikikomori-a shut-in who never leaves his room and has no human interaction-in his parents' home in Tokyo. As Hiro tentatively decides to reenter the world, he spends his days observing life around him from a park bench. Gradually he makes friends with Ohara Tetsu, a middle-aged salaryman who has lost his job but can't bring himself to tell his wife, and shows up every day in a suit and tie to pass the time on a nearby bench. As Hiro and Tetsu cautiously open up to each other, they discover in their sadness a common bond. Regrets and disappointments, as well as hopes and dreams, come to the surface until both find the strength to somehow give a new start to their lives. This beautiful novel is moving, unforgettable, and full of surprises. The reader turns the last page feeling that a small triumph has occurred.</p><p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br>The best of the best from this year's bountiful harvest of uncommonly strong offerings ... Deeply original. --<em>O, The Oprah Magazine</em> <p/>"A spare, stunning, elegiac gem of a book. Milena Michiko Flasar writes with a poet's clarity of language and vision, probing deeply below the surfaces of familiar Japanese stereotypes ... to tell a compassionate and insightful story of dysfunction, despair and friendship."<br>--Ruth Ozeki, author of <em>A Tale for the Time Being</em> <p/>"The quiet reflection of this jewel of a novel is revelatory, redemptive and hypnotic until the last word."<br>--<em>Kirkus Reviews</em> <p/>"Flasar's exquisite, finely wrought novel is both a prose poem and a parable about how we deflect, defer and disconnect from life, and what is needed before we can bravely embrace it again."<br>-- Monique Truong, author of <em>The Book of Salt</em> and <em>Bitter in the Mouth</em> <p/>A tender, melancholy book of great linguistic beauty and clarity. A flawless novel.<br>--<em>Süddeutsche Zeitung</em> <p/>With high artistry . . . this seductive beauty is also strangely religious: the book treats life with an almost Buddhist serenity.<br>--<em>Der Spiegel</em><br><br><p/><br></br><p><b> About the Author </b></p></br></br>Milena Michiko Flasar was born in 1980, the daughter of a Japanese mother and an Austrian father. She lives in Vienna and has written three novels, including <i>I Called Him Necktie</i>, which won the 2012 Austrian Alpha Literature Prize. <p/>Sheila Dickie studied German and Drama at Bristol University and has taught German. She has translated a novel by Claude Michelet from French, and lives in Henley-on-Thames, England.
Cheapest price in the interval: 12.79 on October 27, 2021
Most expensive price in the interval: 12.79 on December 20, 2021
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