Hut of Fallen Persimmons
ABOUT
THE BOOK
In a station of the metro in Rio de Janeiro, where both live, illustrator Haruki and artisan Celina meet by chance-and soon decide, however improbably, to travel together to Japan. Their shared destination: the famous Rakushisha, or Hut of Fallen Persimmons, where seventeenth-century haiku master Matsuo Bashō once stayed. Their trip to Kyoto provides a context for each to meditate on the past, their feelings for each other, and questions of cultural difference. Through a counterpoint of narration and text, the pair’s losses and struggles gradually unfold.
Bashō’s haiku brilliantly mold the novel’s structure. Bashō’s translator in Brazil, readers learn, is Haruki’s great unrequited love, and Celina’s sad eyes conceal a tragedy in her own life. In this exquisitely woven novel, meant to be cradled in both hands as the Japanese might hold a precious object, the characters’ every gesture, reflection, and self-revelation are manifest.
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Sarah
Green
She is a Spanish, Portuguese, and English translator, translation project manager, and language access enthusiast with over 9 years of experience in the translation industry, currently serving as the co-owner of Partners in Language Access (PILA).
She is a Spanish, Portuguese, and English translator, translation project manager, and language access enthusiast with over 9 years of experience in the translation industry, currently serving as the co-owner of Partners in Language Access (PILA).
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
A touching narrative about two characters joined by chance by the poet Matsuo Basho, in a poetic novel where a voyage to Japan is also a metaphysical and an introspective journey to their pasts.
Adriana Lisboa presents us a moving story of loss written in the simplicity that reveals the elegance and beauty of her lyrical prose. Her novel intertwines present character lives with the Japanese poet Bashõ’s days in Saga, Kyoto. The result is as much poetic as a perfect haikai.