One of the premier Japanese novels of the twentieth century, The Women in the Dunes combines the essence of myth, suspense, and the existential novel. In a remote seaside village, Niki Jumpei, a teacher and amateur entomologist, is held captive with a young woman at the bottom of a vast sand pit where, Sisyphus-like, they are pressed into shoveling off the ever-advancing sand dunes that threaten the village.
The most magical things can happen even on the rainiest of days...How many people can you fit under one umbrella? It wasn’t even meant to rain the day the blue umbrella turned up, but for the people who used it that day, they found something more than just shelter: something truly amazing had happened. A community had come together, bound by kindness and friendship.
"Clever and witty."—Chicago Tribune"The writing is offbeat, achieving the trick of seeming at once grounded and untethered. . . . Elemental acuity and the burlesque combine here to delicious
In the years just after World War II, motorcycles were the third largest source of foreign exchange for the United Kingdom, lagging behind only automobiles and Scotch whiskey. And yet, the British mot
A classic from the renowned Japanese novelist about isolation and the threat of a nuclear holocaust, The Ark Sakura is as timely today as it was at its original publication.In this Kafkaesque allegori
The great Buddhist priest K?kai (774-835) is credited with the introduction and establishment of tantric -- or esoteric -- Buddhism in early ninth-century Japan. In "The Weaving of Mantra, " Ry?ichi A
