玉蘭

by Natsuo Kirino

張りつめた東京での生活に疲れ果てた有子は、逃げるように上海へとやって来た。枯れた“玉蘭”によって眠りを遮られ、別れた恋人への愛憎の深さに慄いた夜、彼女の前に大伯父の幽霊が現れる。70年前、この地で船乗りとして生きていた大伯父もまた、1人の女性への断ち切れない想いを抱いていた。人々の活気みなぎる土地上海を舞台に、2組の男女が織り成す恋愛模様。深い恋慕の情は時を越え、現代と過去が交差する。 人を愛するとは、どういうことか。魅力的な登場人物と過激な犯罪描写、読者を惹き込む圧倒的な筆力で、ミステリーの分野において『OUT』（第51回日本推理作家協会賞受賞）や『柔らかな頬』（第121回直木賞受賞）など、数々のヒットを放ってきた桐野夏生。彼女が開いた新たな境地は、大人のための極上の恋愛小説であった。 本書には、2人の女性が描かれている。一方は、複雑な感情を整理するために、「何もかも言葉に」しようとする現代女性、有子。もう一方は、話し合いではなく肉体の交わりによって「すべてを曖昧に」しようとする70年前の大伯父の妻、浪子。いずれの恋愛も完全燃焼せず、しこりを残したまま終わりを迎える。言葉だけでもなく、肉体だけでもない。いったい、恋愛の本質とは何なのか？繊細な女性心理と赤裸々な性交の描写が、痛く、熱く読む者に迫る。まさに、激しい恋愛の只中にいるときのように。（冷水修子）

Paperback Bunko

First published February 1, 2001

About the author

NATSUO KIRINO (桐野夏生), born in 1951 in Kanazawa (Ishikawa Prefecture) was an active and spirited child brought up between her two brothers, one being six years older and the other five years younger than her. Kirino's father, being an architect, took the family to many cities, and Kirino spent her youth in Sendai, Sapporo, and finally settled in Tokyo when she was fourteen, which is where she has been residing since. Kirino showed glimpses of her talent as a writer in her early stages—she was a child with great deal of curiosity, and also a child who could completely immerse herself in her own unique world of imagination.

After completing her law degree, Kirino worked in various fields before becoming a fictional writer; including scheduling and organizing films to be shown in a movie theater, and working as an editor and writer for a magazine publication. She got married to her present husband when she turned twenty-four, and began writing professionally, after giving birth to her daughter, at age thirty. However, it was not until Kirino was forty-one that she made her major debut. Since then, she has written thirteen full-length novels and three volumes of collective short stories, which are highly acclaimed for her intriguingly intelligent plot development and character portrayal, and her unique perspective of Japanese society after the collapse of the economic bubble.

Today, Kirino continues to enthusiastically write in a range of interesting genres. Her smash hit novel OUT (Kodansha, 1997) became the first work to be translated into English and other languages. OUT was also nominated for the 2004 MWA Edgar Allan Poe Award in the Best Novel Category, which made Kirino the first Japanese writer to be nominated for this major literary award. Her other works are now under way to be translated and published around the world.