Mille ans de plaisir

by Kenji Nakagami

Madre Oryù è una levatrice di cento, "o forse mille anni". Racconta la storia di sei giovani, belli e selvaggi, posseduti da una colpa che ignorano, vittime di una tara annidata nel "sangue dei Nakamoto". Tutti e sei, nati e cresciuti in epoche diverse nei Vicoli, hanno il gusto per l'erotismo più sfrenato, compiono furti, omicidi; tutti vivono sul filo di un pericoloso crinale, in bilico tra innocenza e crudeltà, legalità e trasgressione, amore per la vita e attrazione per la morte. La levatrice è testimone del tragico destino dei sei protagonisti; è la memoria storica della sottocasta dei non-uomini burakumin, tuttora discriminata e a cui lo stesso Nakagami apparteneva. Sei racconti legati in un unico sogno atemporale, che scandagliano la verità affascinante di un Giappone sublime e selvaggio.

Genres: Japan, Fiction, Japanese Literature

281 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

See 中上 健次.

Kenji Nakagami (中上健次 Nakagami Kenji, August 2, 1946 – August 12, 1992) was a Japanese novelist and essayist. He is well known as the first, and so far the only, post-war Japanese writer to identify himself publicly as a Burakumin, a member of one of Japan’s long-suffering outcaste groups. His works depict the intense life-experiences of men and women struggling to survive in a Burakumin community in western Japan. His most celebrated novels include “Misaki” (The Cape), which won the Akutagawa Prize in 1976, and “Karekinada” (The Sea of Withered Trees), which won both the Mainichi and Geijutsu Literary Prizes in 1977.

During the 1980s Nakagami was an active and controversial figure in the Japanese literary world, and his work was the subject of much debate among scholars and literary critics. As one reviewer put it, "Nakagami was the first writer from the ghetto to make it into the mainstream and to attempt to tell other Japanese, however fictively or even fantastically, about life at the rough end of the economic miracle." Nakagami was at the height of his fame when he died, of kidney cancer, at the age of 46.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[amelia! · Rating 3 out of 5]

incredibly freaky but also its one of like 4 pieces of media i can think of that deal w men being sexually assaulted so thats interesting

[Atsu · Rating 4 out of 5]

見方によっては色狂いの男たちが何世代も出てくるだけの本なのに、壮大な時空を感じさせるすごい一冊です。死後20年近く経ってますが、未だにあちこちで名前が出てくる偉大な物書きです。

[Giovanni Botta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finito nel 12/set/2008 00:00:00