| NOTA |
(*)(Translated by Christopher D. Scott) (★)(´NI-0081´ es mismo libro. Titulo original : 星条旗の聞こえない部屋[Seijooki no kikoenai heya, 1992] 1.Set against the political and social upheavals of the 1960s,´A Room Where the Star-Spangled Banner Cannot Be Heard´tells the story of Ben Issac, a blond-haired, blue-eyed American youth living with his father at the American consulate in Yokohama. Chafing against his father´s strict authority and the trappings of an American culture that has grown increasingly remote, Ben flees home to live with Ando, his Japanese friend. Refusing to speak English with Ben, Ando shows the young American the way to Shinjuku, the epicenter of Japan´s countercultural movement and the closest Ben has ever felt to home. 2.From the vantage point of a privileged and alienated´outsider [gaijin]´, Levy´s narrative, which echoes events in his own life, beautifully captures a heady, eventful moment in Japanese history. It also richly renders the universal struggle to grasp the full contours of one´s identity. Wandering the streets of Shinjuku, Ben can barely decipher the signs around him or make sense of the sounds reaching his ears. Eventually, the symbols and sensations take root, and he becomes one with Japanese language and culture. Through his explorations, Ben breaks free from English and the constraints of being a gaijin. Levy´s coming-of-age novel is an eloquent elegy to a lost time. 2.Levy Hideo [Ian Hideo Levy, 1950-, リービ英雄] is known as the first white American novelist to write in Japanese. Born to a Jewish American father and a Polish immigrant mother, he became an assistant professor of Japanese literature at Princeton University at twenty-eight. In 1981, he published an English translation of the first five volumes of Japan´s first imperial poetry anthology,´Man´yoshu´[Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves], for which he won a National Book Award for Translation. Now based in Tokyo, he travels frequently to the United States and China in connection with his writing.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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