図書準備室

The narrator is past thirty and has never held a job; his father died when he was young, and he lives off his mother, who pays for his drinking and gives him money when he asks. At the memorial held two years after his grandfather's death, an aunt asks whether it is not time he went to work. His reply turns into a long, winding speech: he is sorry not for being idle but for talking, which, unlike working, he fully means to do. Through it emerges the story of a teacher from his junior-high days, whom he once made confess to something he did in the war, and of the man's eyes, which the narrator holds responsible for the life he leads. Sneering at that confession, he sets out to turn accepted values upside down.

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About the book

Form

Novella

Length

184 pages in the original

Set in

Japan

First published

2006 by Shinchosha

Author's age

34 when first published

ISBN

9784103041313 (original)