Echo on the Bay
- 160 pages
- 6 hours of reading
"Tells the story of a small fishing village in Japan-with the untreated wounds of the town's history in the foreground"--
Masatsugu Ono Books
Masatsugu Ono, a professor and researcher of Francophone literature, maintains a steady output of fiction that delves deeply into the human psyche and intricate relationships. His narratives often explore themes of identity, memory, and the search for meaning in the contemporary world. Ono's prose is characterized by its poetic quality, coupled with a sharp analytical edge, offering readers a rich and thought-provoking literary experience.
At the Edge of the Woods
- 184 pages
- 7 hours of reading
In an unnamed foreign country, a family of three settles into a house at the edge of the woods where they hope to make a life. But something is off. A sound, at first like coughing and then like laughter, emanates from the nearby forest. Fantastical creatures, it is said, live out there in a castle where feudal lords reigned and Resistance fighters fell. When the mother, fearing another miscarriage, returns to her family’s home to give birth to a second child, father and son are left to their own devices in rural isolation. Haunted by the ever-present woods, they look on as the TV flashes with floods and processions of refugees. The boy brings a mysterious half-naked old woman home, but before the father can make sense of her presence, she disappears. A mail carrier with a menacing disposition visits to deliver nothing but gossip of violence. A tree stump in the yard refuses to die, no matter how generously the poison is applied.An allegory for societal alienation and climate catastrophe unlike any other, At the Edge of the Woods sees the Mishima Prize-winning writer’s trademark understatement used to brutal, brilliant effect. A psychological tale where myth and fantasy are not the dominion of childhood innocence but the poison fruit borne of the fear, paranoia, and violence of contemporary life.