Мицуё Какута — новинки

Номер тематический, и называется он «Восток — дело тонкое». Повесть японской писательницы Кусаки Ёко (1931—1952) «Рассыпающийся мир». Перевод и вступление Екатерины Юдиной. Хроника нескольких драматических дней из жизни пришедшего в упадок знатного рода. Англоязычная писательница родом из Индии Шубха Сундер. Два рассказа в переводе и со вступлением Галины Шульги. В этих рассказах, — говорится во вступлении, - «Шубха Сундер запечатлела город своего детства Бангалор, девочек-подростков со всеми экзистенциальными ужасами взросления…» «Небо, ветер, звезды и стихи» — мини-антология восточной поэзии. В нее вошли стихи классиков и…

A shape-shifter arrives at Tokyo harbour in human form, set to embark on an unstoppable rampage through the city’s train network…

A young woman is accompanied home one night by a reclusive student, and finds herself lured into a flat full of eerie Egyptian artefacts…

A man suspects his young wife’s obsession with picnicking every
weekend in the city’s parks hides a darker motive…

At first, Tokyo appears in these stories as it does to many outsiders: a city of bewildering scale, awe-inspiring modernity, peculiar rules, unknowable secrets and, to some extent, danger. Characters observe their fellow citizens from afar, hesitant to stray from their daily routines to engage with them. But Tokyo being the city it is, random encounters inevitably take place – a naïve book collector, mistaken for a French speaker, is drawn into a world he never knew existed; a woman seeking psychiatric help finds herself in a taxi with an older man wanting to share his own peculiar revelations; a depressed divorcee accepts an unexpected lunch invitation to try Thai food for the very first time… The result in each story is a small but crucial change in perspective, a sampling of the unexpected yet simple pleasure of other people’s company. As one character puts it, ‘The world is full of delicious things, you know.’

The year is 1985. Kiwako is an ordinary office worker, in love with a married man, until an unwanted abortion causes her to snap. She kidnaps her lover's six-month-old baby and runs away with her, eventually taking refuge in an all-female religious commune. Here, she attempts to raise the girl. Fifteen years later, the child, Elena, is an adult contending with the difficulties of returning to her "natural family," made up of a mother who doesn't come home, an alcoholic father, and siblings with whom she can't connect. Mitsuyo Kakuta's powerful second novel in English is a sympathetic portrait of two women brought together by tragedy,…