ビニール傘

Two stories. In the title piece, a poor young man and a poor young woman take turns saying 'I' as they scrape by on the margins of Osaka, lonely, longing for company and uncertain of tomorrow. Their lives come in fragments that leap across time and place without explanation, crowded with grubby detail: dark grit at the edge of the highway, a woman sleeping where no sunlight ever falls, a cramped plastic bathroom. The second story, 'The Moon on My Back', enters the mind of a man weighed down by an immense loss, who, like everyone, has a little chamber in his head to retreat into when things hurt.

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About the book

Form

Novella

Length

124 pages in the original

Set in

Japan

First published

2016 by Shinchosha

Author's age

49 when first published

ISBN

9784103507215 (original)