Description
Book SynopsisIn these two novellas, Kimura Yūsuke explores human and animal life in northern Japan after the natural and nuclear disasters of March 11, 211. Kimura inscribes the “Triple Disaster” into a rich regional tradition of storytelling, incorporating far-flung voices to testify to life and the desire to represent it in the aftermath of calamity.
Trade ReviewSacred Cesium Ground and Isa’s Deluge is a potent representation of stubborn locals and places that refuse to be forgotten, clinging to integrity and humanity in the face of disaster and apathy. Defiant and awake, Kimura’s work speaks softly and carries a wallop. * Foreword Reviews (starred review) *
Two haunting novellas that are slight in length yet dense with meaning, enhancing the growing genre of post-3/11 literature in response to the catastrophic March 11, 2011, Tohoku earthquake, tsunami, and Fukushima nuclear meltdown. . . . Kimura's novellas offer a piercing portrait of the abandoned and forgotten. * Booklist *
Both novellas highlight peripheral voices in the post-3/11 period and ultimately return time and again to that tension between a “sacrificial” Tohoku and an all-powerful capital. These perspectives are those not frequently heard and challenge the widespread narrative of an ever-dominant Tokyo. * Japan Times *
Kimura Yūsuke's novels are expanding the frontiers of Japanese-language literature. Literature consists of giving voice to the speechless, so novels at the frontiers often take on strange shapes. Kimura Yūsuke is attentive to and gives shape to vital voices of the people and animals of northeastern Japan that few have been able to hear. His vision goes far beyond Tohoku; it captures the future of the planet. -- Hoshino Tomoyuki, author of
We, the Children of Cats, winner of the Tanizaki Jun'ichiro Prize
Animals are speechless. In
Sacred Cesium Ground, Kimura speaks up for them. The residents of Japan's disaster-ravaged northeastern region are voiceless. He gives them voice in
Isa's Deluge. In a spirit of solidarity with the silenced and marginalized, he reexamines the logic behind Japan’s modernity. The result is this volume: outrageously honest and powerfully haunting. -- Suga Keijirō, author of
Transversal Journeys, winner of the Yomiuri Prize for Literature
Kimura pulls the reader into the irradiated zone where residents struggle for justice against a government that treats them as disposable as the cattle they illegally tend.
Sacred Cesium Ground asks tough questions: What will happen to Japan’s irradiated areas? Who is responsible for this nuclear tragedy? Slaymaker’s translation brings this important novel into dialogue with nuclear fiction worldwide. -- Rachel DiNitto, University of Oregon
Isa's Deluge is at once a story of the triple disaster in northeastern Japan and of one man's search for his roots. Kimura's themes of destruction and ancestry culminate in an unforgettable, searing attack by the long marginalized against the powers that be. -- Davinder Bhowmik, University of Washington
Table of ContentsSacred Cesium GroundIsa’s DelugeAfterword
