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(*)(山田太一, trans. by Wayne P. Lammers) (★)(Titulo original : 異人たちとの夏 [Ijin tachi to no Natsu] Middle-aged, and aimless after his divorce, Harada has taken to visiting his parents. In fact, he´s enjoying their company more than ever. Trouble is, they´ve been dead for years. When jaded 48-year-old scriptwriter Harada visits Tokyo´s old entertainment district where he grew up, he encounters a likeable working man who is the spitting image of his dead father. Lonely, nostalgic, and willing to believe the unbelievable, Harada follows the mysterious man, embarking on a bittersweet journey into the womb of a city whose living inhabitants have perhaps changed too rapidly and lost their souls. While the visits to his parents seem invigorating to Harada, his beautiful and strangely vulnerable neighbor Kei insists that he stop seeing them for his own good. A battle for the soul --Harada´s, a tired city´s-- ensues in this thinking man´s ghost story. ´Strangers´, with its moral probity and indelible warmth, is a contemporary classic. ◆Taichi Yamada worked at world-renowned Shochiku film studios until he set out on a highly successful career as a freelance scriptwriter that changed the Japanese TV drama forever. In the 1980s he started writing novels too, and Strangers, which was made into an acclaimed movie, is among his best. A household name synonymous with thoughtful entertainment in his own country, Taichi Yamada lives in Kawasaki, Japan. ´Strangers´ is his English-language debut.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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