false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178160378m/765932.jpg 765932 1 Forget everything you thought you knew about Japanese literature; in <I>The Cape and Other Stories from the Japanese Ghetto</I>, Kenji Nakagami shows a face of Japan that's unlike any the West has seen before. A member of the <I>burakumin</I> minority--often called Japan's untouchables--the author used disjointed, rough-hewn prose to describe a gritty, down-and-out world. Both "The Cape" and "House on Fire" explore the tangled family ties of Akiyuki, a construction worker who lives among the crowded <I>roji</I> or alleyways of the Kishu province. Marked by madness, incest, and violence, the place makes Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County look like Mr. Rogers's neighborhood. In the course of "The Cape," for instance, Akiyuki's sister loses her mind, an in-law dies after being stabbed in his "good leg," and Akiyuki himself sleeps with a whore he strongly suspects is his half-sister. In spite of this troubled legacy, this man is the very opposite of introspective. With his longing for purity and his tireless appetite for physical labor, he's a kind of blank canvas against which his complicated family romance plays out: <blockquote> The tree reminded him of himself. Akiyuki didn't know what kind of tree it was, and he didn't care. The tree had no flowers or fruit. It spread its branches to the sun, it trembled in the wind. That's enough, he thought. The tree doesn't need flowers or fruit. It doesn't need a name. </blockquote> Unfortunately, the third story here ("Red Hair") is a disappointment--the kind of cheerless, one-note erotica that makes sex look like a torture devised by Existentialist philosophers. No matter; grand, tragic, and structurally complex, "The Cape" and "House on Fire" contain enough Freudian drama between them to keep a pair of Faulkner scholars obsessed for weeks. Skillfully translated by Eve Zimmerman (who also provides a preface, afterword, and helpful family tree), this is fiction of explosive power and formal daring. <I>--Mary Park</I> 752000 1999 The Cape and Other Stories from the Japanese Ghetto total:19|5:5|4:7|3:5|2:2|1:0| 19 72 37 3 765932 1880656396 9781880656396 19 3 3.79 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178160378m/765932.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/765932.The_Cape_and_Other_Stories_from_the_Japanese_Ghetto 3 0 false Fri Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Mar 03 09:41:54 -0800 2008 Mon Mar 03 09:45:17 -0800 2008
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1880656396 9781880656396 19 3 3.79 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178160378m/765932.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/765932.The_Cape_and_Other_Stories_from_the_Japanese_Ghetto 3 0 false Mon Jul 06 06:26:42 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 01 17:48:15 -0700 2009 Mon Jul 06 06:26:42 -0700 2009 765932 1880656396 9781880656396 19 3 3.79 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178160378m/765932.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/765932.The_Cape_and_Other_Stories_from_the_Japanese_Ghetto 0 0 false Fri May 15 12:42:48 -0700 2009 Fri May 15 12:42:48 -0700 2009 765932 1880656396 9781880656396 19 3 3.79 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178160378m/765932.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/765932.The_Cape_and_Other_Stories_from_the_Japanese_Ghetto 0 0 false Tue May 05 22:38:58 -0700 2009 Tue May 05 22:38:58 -0700 2009 765932 1880656396 9781880656396 19 3 3.79 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178160378m/765932.jpg 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03:44:16 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 16 03:44:16 -0800 2009 765932 1880656396 9781880656396 19 3 3.79 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178160378m/765932.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/765932.The_Cape_and_Other_Stories_from_the_Japanese_Ghetto 2 0 false Thu Jan 08 19:22:22 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 08 19:22:22 -0800 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=765932