Outside Tokyo, a tuberculosis sanatorium in the village of K has a six-bed ward that the narrator, an aspiring poet, shares with a student of linguistics and budding writer named Shiomi. After the stubborn Shiomi insists on undergoing a dangerous surgical procedure and dies in the process, two notebooks turn up in his bed-sheets. Flowers of Grass unfolds as the narrator reads them, asking himself if Shiomi s death was a sort of suicide, and learning the details of his late friend s two great loves: for a brother and sister, both of whom reject him. Fukunaga himself spent seven years recuperating from tuberculosis following World War II, and drew on his own experiences to create a fully realized portrait of a young man of fastidious intelligence and great sorrow, and how it is possible, seeing reality from the side of death and despair, to still choose life.
Title: Flowers of Grass
Subtitle:
Contributors:
By (author)
Takehiko Fukunaga
ISBN 13: 9781564787149
ISBN 10: 1564787141
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
Imprint: Dalkey Archive Press
Publication Date: 24/04/2012
Place of Publication:
Normal,
United States
Edition:
BIC Subjects:
Modern fiction
Dewey Classification:
895.635
(DC21)
NBS Classification: General & Literary Fiction
Format: Paperback
Pages: 225
Height: 202mm
Width: 139mm
Thickness: 17mm
Weight: 296g