死んでいない者

On an autumn evening, close to thirty people crowd into a house to keep vigil over a man who lived to a great age: his five children, his grandchildren, a great-grandchild, their husbands and wives, a few friends. They are family, though not a close one, and once the drinking starts the elderly cannot place the young relative refilling their glasses. One grandson has hidden himself for years in an outbuilding; a son once ran off and left his child behind; Chika, a granddaughter, is struck by the likeness between her father and her aunt's husband. The telling slides from one mind to the next without warning, so that memories of the dead man and of each other merge, and the long-departed slip into the night's talk as if still at the table.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

144 pages in the original

Genres

Family (assigned by AI)

Set in

Japan

First published

2015 by Bungeishunju

Author's age

33 when first published

ISBN

9784163904122 (original)