A chance to win a copy of Bullfight by Inoue Yasushi - a give away post.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a few years blogging, and also to aptly mark the recent publication of The Life of A Counterfeiter, the third book by Inoue Yasushi from Pushkin Press, recently read here, it gives me great pleasure to be able to offer readers with my first give away post, a chance to receive and review a copy of Bullfight, the Akutagawa Prize winning story by Inoue Yasushi, translated by Michael Emmerich, via the generosity of Pushkin Press. All you need to do is to leave a comment to register your interest then send me an email, (via my profile), with your postal address and after 10 days, (or there about, apologies - this is the speed I work at!), I'll pop all names into a hat or bag and then pick the name of the lucky recipient, I'm happy to post anywhere on the globe, but obviously there is also the obligatory provision - that once you've read the book you post a review of it on either your own, or your favourite website or blog so that I have somewhere to link on to after the event. So there you go, that's all there is to it, if you'd like the opportunity to win and read this copy of a post war masterpiece leave a comment stating your interest and then drop us an email with a contact address - good luck and all the best.

 

Bullfight at Pushkin Press  

 

文豪の家 - Bungou no Ie



A book that I've been intending for a while to give a brief synopsis of, Bugou no Ie, published earlier last year offers an insight into the houses lived in by a number of famous writers, know the house - know the writer, as the obi of the book mentions, perhaps if you wanted a literary tour of Japan this book would make a great companion, I like how the door behind the title is slightly ajar inviting us in.  The book offers a snapshot of houses lived in by writers mostly of Meiji to mid twentieth century, late Showa, there is a mixture of black and white and color photographs, along with floor plan layouts of the houses and notes of artefacts of the authors. Here's a list of the writer's whose houses are featured, Mokichi Saito, Takeo Arishima, Dazai Osamu, Haruo Sato, Yasushi Inoue, Soseki Natsume, Naoya Shiga, Hakusha Kitahara, Takuboku Ishikawa, Toson Shimazaki, Doppo Kunikida, Ranpo Edogawa, Kojin Shimomura, Yakumo Koizumi, Seicho Matsumoto, Junichiro Tanizaki, Rohan Koda, Nobuko Yoshiya, Saneatsu Mushanokoji, Sakutaro Hagiwara, Katai Tayama, Saisei Muro, Fumiko Hayashi, Kyoshi Takahama, Ogai Mori, Ashihei Hiino, Shoyo Tsubouchi, Kunio Yanagita, Tatsuo Hori, Roka Tokutomi, Bokusui Wakayama, Shiki Masaoka, Kenkichi Nakamura, Saika Tomita, Kenji Miyazawa, Yaeko Nogami. Probably out of these the house lived in by Yaeko Nogami in Nagano is amongst my favourite, an old property it's roof is thatched, situated near a tree, leaves have fallen on it, giving the impression that the roof has created it's own ecological system, with a mixture of thatch, moss and leaves. The book is published from x-knowledge, a publisher whose focus is on architecture, they publish the magazine, My Home +, who have also earlier this year published a companion book to this one focusing on Literary Landscapes, which looks at landscapes associated with authors and their works - another to hunt out.  

x-knowledge

the book at amazon.jp and also the companion book Literary Landscapes   

Reading history from the past year

Recently noticed that it's been a little over a year since updating a list of books read outside of Japanese translations, so here's a list of what I've been reading -


Patrick Suskind - The Pigeon
D.B.C Pierre - Vernon God Little
Diego Marani - New Finnish Grammar
Gabriel Josipovici - Everything Passes
Paul Leppin - Severin's Journey into the Dark
Vladimir Odoevsky - Two Days in the Life of the Terrestrial Globe
Ferdinand von Schirach - The Collini Case
Andre Brink - The Blue Door
Jerzy Andrzejewski - The Appeal
Jorge Luis Borges - Seven Nights
Mary Butts - Armed With Madness
Gert Ledig - Payback
Denton Welch - A Voice Through A Cloud
W.G Sebald and Jan Peter Tripp - Unrecounted
Bruno Schulz - Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass
Andrey Platonov - The Foundation Pit
Tao Lin - Eeeee Eee Eeee
Pierre Michon - Small Lives
Rene Crevel - Babylon
Georges Bataille - Story of the Eye
Andre Malraux - The Walnut Trees of Altenburg
Ted Hughes - The Hawk in the Rain
J.D Salinger - For Esme - With Love and Squalor
Marghanita Laski - The Victorian Chaise Longue
Denton Welch - In Youth is Pleasure
Sandor Marai - Esther's Inheritance
Maruerite Yourcenar - Alexis
Geroge Simenon - The Little Man From Archangel
Charles Simic - Selected Poems
Cicely Hamilton - William - An Englishman
Ernst Junger - Eumeswil
John Williams - Stoner
Jeremias Gotthelf - The Black Spider
Marguerite Dumas - Writing
John Cheever - Falconer
Adolfo Bioy Casares - The Invention of Morel
Henri Barbusse - Under Fire
Herbert Read - The Green Child
Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar
Erico Verissimo - Night
Igor Vishnevetsy - Leningrad
Sylvia Plath - The Colossus
Andre Gide - Strait is the Gate
Odon von Horvath - Youth Without God
David Edmonds and John Eidinow - Wittgenstein's Poker
Greg Baxter - Munich Airport
Clarice Lispector - The Passion According to G.H
Alexander Lernet-Holenia - I Was Jack Mortimer 
Antal Szerb - The Third Tower
Clarice Lispector - Near to the Wild Heart
Thornton Wilder - The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Italo Calvino - Under the Jaguar Sun
Clarice Lispector - Hour of the Star
Pierre Drieu la Rochelle - The Comedy of Charleroi and Other Stories
Italo Svevo - As a Man Grows Older
Jean Cocteau - The Difficulty of Being
Jean Genet - Funeral Rites
Paolo Volponi - The Worldwide Machine
Colette - The Ripening Seed

I guess this year's discovered author for me has been Clarice Lispector, I've a copy of Agua Viva on the way, and then perhaps afterwards I'm going to turn to her recent biography by Benjamin Moser. Recently I've I think my reading has changed in pattern, I feel that I'll get hooked by an author and then feel that I have to read their available works, perhaps this started after reading Lispector, but after reading Genet again recently I'll turn to his other novels, although I read Miracle of a Rose years ago I feel it's time to check out his other novels, with regards to Japanese authors, Soseki and Abe Kobo are two authors that I feel that I still need to catch up with their works. Another French novelist that I'd like to turn to is Jean-Louis Curtis, whose The Forest Of The Night, translated by Nora Wydenbruk, I'm aiming to read soon, which apparently is available to read online.