Shipwrecks
Set in an isolated and impoverished medieval Japanese fishing village, the novel tells the tale of a young boy, Isaku, who is left to care for the family when his father leaves the village as an indentured worker. Dust jacket copy says, "...The villagers catch barely enough fish to subsist on, and distill salt from seawater to sell to other villages. But the industry serves another, more sinister purpose: they hope the fires of the salt cauldrons will lure passing ships toward the shore and onto rocky shoals. When a ship runs aground, they slaughter the crew and loot the cargo. As the end of his father’s bondage approaches – the day Iaku has been waiting for – a ship founders on the rocks, and the villagers rejoice. But its cargo is not at all the manna of their hopes."
Akira Yoshimura, born in 1927, is the author of twenty novels. Shipwrecks is his first novel to be translated into English.
|
