Tsushima Yu ko Books

A dual-language edition of Japanese stories—many appearing in English for the first time This volume of eight short stories, with parallel translations, offers students at all levels the opportunity to enjoy a wide range of contemporary literature without having constantly to refer back to a dictionary. The stories—many of which appear here in English for the first time—are by well-known writers like Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto, as well as emerging voices like Abe Kazushige, Ishii Shinji, and Kawakami Hiromi. From the orthodox to the cutting-edge, they represent a range of styles and themes, showcasing the diversity of Japanese fiction over the past few decades in a collection that is equally rewarding for beginning, intermediate, and advanced students of English or Japanese. Complete with notes, the stories make excellent reading in either language.

It is Spring. A young woman, left by her husband, starts a new life in a Tokyo apartment. Territory of Light follows her over the course of a year, as she struggles to bring up her two-year-old daughter alone. Her new home is filled with light, streaming through the windows, so bright you have to squint, but she finds herself plummeting deeper into darkness; becoming unstable, untethered. As the months come and go, and the seasons turn, she must confront what she has lost and what she will become.