Record of a Night Too Brief

158 pages

English language

Published June 14, 2017

ISBN:
978-1-78227-271-7
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OCLC Number:
954537383

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"One morning, a woman treads on a snake. She comes home that evening and realises the snake has moved into her house and is saying she is her mother. So begins the story of a woman trying to live with a snake, with herself, or perhaps with something else all together. This volume includes the three stories Tread on a Snake, Missing, and Record of a Night Too Brief which together won the Akutagawa Prize in 1996. Filled with fantastically multicoloured images and unexplained collapses in time and place, these highly surreal, meticulously worked stories of longing and disappearance, love and loathing are the work of an enormously talented writer at the top of her game." -- Provided by publisher.

1 edition

Review of 'Record of a Night Too Brief' on 'Goodreads'

I started reading this book at the beginning of a long train ride. While turning the pages, I drifted off to sleep. As I watched the trees float by outside the train window, I had a series of dreams.

A girl, reiterated. The two of us saw many things. We went to the festival and stepped into the fireworks. Then goshiki told me the story of my 2 brothers, which I had forgotten. Family traditions change, don't they? Finally, the snake in myself reared up and we debated about labor and self and routine and surrender and care and struggle and symbols. The snake both was me and was not me.

I suddenly awoke. I was at my destination with no memory of disembarking from the train. The wind through the trees was speaking to me, whispering kuna-nira.

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Subjects

  • Translations into English