Darkness in Summer by Takeshi Kaiko
"This intensely modern novel … provides vivid insights into the alienated condition of a certain type of Japanese whom we may so often glimpse in the streets of Rome or New York—intelligent, perceptive, and desperately lost between two worlds."—Ivan Morris, author of The Nobility of Failure. The original publication of Darkness in Summer marked the first serious work of Japanese fiction to focus on the Japanese experience in the West. A man and a woman, separated for ten years, meet again, traveling together in Germany. They had been lovers long ago, in Tokyo. Now, incapable of love, they are brought together by sexual desire and by their mutual desperation. No new passion, but their old obsession, may give them back the key to their lives, release them from their terrors, and their rootlessness. The woman is a scholar who has come to hate the Japan that didn't take her seriously, forcing her to pursue a career in the West; the man is a novelist-reporter, lethargic, and an uncommitted observer of other people's wars, sunk into detachment by his professional familiarity with tragedy and chaos. They need each other, and yet they cannot fulfill each other's needs. They savor their world together with urgency as they move restlessly from place to place, finally parting once more to survive separately as best they can.
"I thought Darkness in Summer was going to be a love storyIt is rather about two people going their own separate ways even after reconnecting for a brief time. It is a story of differences, and alienation, from one another and from their own country.
All he can do is sleep: a deep, indolent, self-indulging sleep. All she can do is dwell on her hatred for Japan, for after that there is nothing else." —Dolce Bellezza
"This intensely modern novel … provides vivid insights into the alienated condition of a certain type of Japanese whom we may so often glimpse in the streets of Rome or New York—intelligent, perceptive, and desperately lost between two worlds." —Ivan Morris, author of The Nobility of Failure
All he can do is sleep: a deep, indolent, self-indulging sleep. All she can do is dwell on her hatred for Japan, for after that there is nothing else." —Dolce Bellezza
"This intensely modern novel … provides vivid insights into the alienated condition of a certain type of Japanese whom we may so often glimpse in the streets of Rome or New York—intelligent, perceptive, and desperately lost between two worlds." —Ivan Morris, author of The Nobility of Failure
Takeshi Kaiko (1930-1989), winner of his country's highest literary awards-both the Akutagawa and the Mainichi-was born and raised in Osaka. He is ranked by Japanese critics, with Kobo Abe, as one of Japan's two most important novelists of the generation since Mishima.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780804833257 |
| ISBN 10 | 0804833257 |
| Title | Darkness in Summer |
| Author | Takeshi Kaiko |
| Series | Tuttle Classics |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Tuttle Publishing |
| Year published | 2005-03-15 |
| Number of pages | 216 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |