| NOTA |
(★)(Translated by Ian Hideo Levy／ Titulo original : Ikari no nai Fune [錨のない船, 1982]／ In the fall of 1941 a senior Japanese diplomat is sent on a desperate mission -a last-ditch attempt to secure peace with the United States. But, unknown to him, the Japanese military have their own plans. On December 7th, he stands before a furious Secretary of State to deliver Japan´s ultimatum, unaware that, an hour earlier, his country has attacked Pearl Harbor. Around this event unfolds the story of an extraordinary family, caught between two hostile nations. At its head is Saburo, the pro-American diplomat who becomes reviled in America as an instrument of treachery. At his side is Alice, the passionate and courageous American woman who fell in love with him and followed him halfway around the world, only to find her adopted country at war with her own people. And in between is their beloved son Ken, a Japanese Army pilot with a Caucasian face, haunted by his ´enemy blood,´ and fated to do battle in the skies with his other half- his mother´s countrymen. The war intensifies. The bombing of Tokyo begins. The order to fly suicide missions against the B-29s is given. And one of the most powerful and stirring accounts of a family loyal to its principles, and loyal to each other, moves to its shocking climax...／ ◆The Author : Otohiko Kaga [加賀乙彦] was born in Tokyo in 1929. As a teenager he became a cadet at the Junior Army Academy, and at the age of sixteen he saw his hometown go up in flames. After studying in postwar France, he became a professor of criminal psychology and counselor to prisoners on death row. Turning to literature in his late thirties, he made his debut with ´A Winter in Flanders´, followed by ´A Summer Never to Return´, a novel based on his wartime experiences, which won the prestigious Tanizaki Prize in 1073. He achieved best-selling status in 1979 with ´The Sentence´, a massive novel about Japan´s condemned prisoners, and then ´Riding the East Wind´ in 1982 -works which established him as a master of the Western-style epic in a country where the short story and the novella had been the main vehicles of serious fiction. He has recently completed ´The Eternal City´, a trilogy about Tokyo in the 1930s and 1940s, crowning a career as an expert literary witness to the effects of war. ´Riding the East Wind´ is his first novel to appear in English.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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