笹の舟で海をわたる

by Mitsuyo Kakuta, 角田光代

『本の雑誌』が選ぶ 2014年ベスト10(ノンジャンル)の第1位 獲得! ! 終戦から10年、主人公・左織(さおり)は22歳の時、銀座で女に声をかけられる。風美子(ふみこ)と名乗る女は、左織と疎開先が一緒だったという。風美子は、あの時皆でいじめた女の子?「仕返し」のために現れたのか。欲しいものは何でも手に入れるという風美子はやがて左織の「家族」となり、その存在が左織の日常をおびやかし始める。うしろめたい記憶に縛られたまま手に入れた「幸福な人生」の結末は――。激動の戦後を生き抜いた女たちの〈人生の真実〉に迫る角田文学の最新長編。あの時代を生きたすべての日本人に贈る感動大作!

382 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 2014

About the author

Mitsuyo Kakuta (角田光代, 1967–) set her sights on becoming a writer from an early age. Her debut novel—Kōfuku na yūgi (A Blissful Pastime), written while she was a university student—received the Kaien Prize for New Writers in 1990. She has been working continuously as an author ever since, never having had to support herself with a separate job. Three nominations for the Akutagawa Prize serve as a measure of the promise with which she was regarded from early in her career. Then, at the encouragement of an editor, she shifted toward the entertainment end of the literary spectrum, where she garnered a much broader readership with works depicting the lives of women in her generation, from their mid-thirties to forties. After publishing two brilliant novels in 2002, Ekonomikaru paresu (Economical Palace) and Kūchū teien (Hanging Garden), she went on to win the Naoki Prize for the second half of 2004 with Woman on the Other Shore (tr. 2007). Her successes continued with The Eighth Day (tr. 2010), which received the 2007 Chūō Kōron Literary Prize and was made into a televised drama series as well as a movie; the book sold more than a million copies, vaulting her into the ranks of Japan's best-selling authors. In 2012 she added to her list of honors by earning the Shibata Renzaburō Award for her novel Kami no tsuki (Paper Moon), and the Izumi Kyōka Prize for her volume of short stories Kanata no ko (The Children Beyond).

Mitsuyo Kakuta is currently working on translating the Tale of Genji into modern Japanese.
(source: BooksFromJapan.jp)