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Zusatztext "Atmospheric! meditative story of memory and loss in a gentrifying Tokyo neighborhood. . . An elegant story that is in many ways more reminiscent of Mishima and Akutagawa than many contemporary Japanese writers." — Kirkus Reviews "Spring Garden by Tomoka Shibasaki looks at loneliness and loss with uncommon detail and understated force. . . Shibasaki's minimalist language comes across with poetic sensibility. Every word matters in this unflinching and quietly powerful novella. . . a brief! exquisitely crafted story of human connection in a contemporary! alienating society." — Shelf Awareness for Readers (Starred Review) "Measured! understated and poetic at the right moments…making the novel difficult to put down." — Japan Society Journal (UK) A "delicate! intimate novella." -- The Lady magazine " — Japan Society Magazine Informationen zum Autor Tomoka Shibasaki was born in 1973 in Osaka and began writing fiction while still in high school. After graduating from university, she took an office job but continued writing, and was shortlisted for the Bungei Prize in 1998. Her first book, A Day on the Planet , was turned into a hit movie, and Spring Garden won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 2014. Klappentext Originally published in Japanese as: Haru no niwa. Tåokyåo: Bungei Shunjåu, 2014.Winner of the Akutagawa Prize: a sharp, photo-realistic novella of memory and thwarted hopeThe woman was looking at something over her firstfloor balcony, her hands gripping the railing, her neck craned forward. From the ground floor, Taro watched the woman. She did not move. The sunlight that reflected off her blackframed glasses meant that Taro couldn’t tell which direction she was looking, but she was faced straight ahead, towards the concrete wall and, beyond it, the house of Mrs Saeki, who owned the flats. It was a block of flats shaped like an L flipped and rotated so that the short section was hanging down. Taro’s flat was in the short section. The woman on the balcony was at the far end of the long section, the flat farthest away from his. He had happened to catch sight of her as he went to shut the small window looking out onto the courtyard—although courtyard was really too grand a word for that space, three metres wide with weeds growing in the gaps between the paving stones, and to top it all, a sign that read no entry. With the arrival of spring, the concrete wall separating the flats from Mrs Saeki’s house had suddenly become thick with ivy. The two trees growing immediately behind the wall, a maple and a plum, had been left untended, and their branches now stretched over it. Behind the trees was the two-storey wooden house belonging to Mrs Saeki which, to go by its appearance, must have been pretty old. As usual, there were no signs of anyone at home. The woman hadn’t moved an inch. From where Taro stood, he could see only the concrete wall and the roof of Mrs Saeki’s house, but he assumed that from the first floor the woman could probably see down to the ground level of the house and its garden. Still, what could have been so fascinating about a view like that? The most striking thing about the house’s red corrugated iron roof and its dark brown wooden walls was the extent of their wear and tear. It was now a year since Mrs Saeki, who’d been living on her own, had moved into a care home for seniors. She’d looked spritely enough whenever Taro saw her sweeping the front of her house, but apparently she was about to turn eighty-six. All this Taro had learnt from the estate agent. Beyond the roof of Mrs Saeki’s house, Taro could see the sky. It had been perfectly clear w...
