Black rain

Fülszöveg

BLACK RAIN
This is the novel that was hailed in Japan as the first true work of art to be inspired by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Centered around the story of a young woman who was caught in the radioactive "black rain" that fell after the bombing, it is based largely on actual accounts written or related by survivors of the holocaust. In that sense, it is a documentary novel, but it is also far more than that. With the skill of a lifetime, the author weaves together the varied strands of his story into something far greater than the sum of its parts. Subtly, he tempers horror with the gentle humor for which he is famous. Alongside the horrifying wastes of the ruined city, he sets the gentle Japanese countryside with its unchanging people and traditions. Against the threat of universal destruction, he sets the small, unimportant—and hence infinitely touching—human things, and it is the latter that triumph in the end. That is why the work, though sad, is never depressing.... Tovább

Fülszöveg

BLACK RAIN
This is the novel that was hailed in Japan as the first true work of art to be inspired by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Centered around the story of a young woman who was caught in the radioactive "black rain" that fell after the bombing, it is based largely on actual accounts written or related by survivors of the holocaust. In that sense, it is a documentary novel, but it is also far more than that. With the skill of a lifetime, the author weaves together the varied strands of his story into something far greater than the sum of its parts. Subtly, he tempers horror with the gentle humor for which he is famous. Alongside the horrifying wastes of the ruined city, he sets the gentle Japanese countryside with its unchanging people and traditions. Against the threat of universal destruction, he sets the small, unimportant—and hence infinitely touching—human things, and it is the latter that triumph in the end. That is why the work, though sad, is never depressing. Rather, it leaves the reader with a sense of the sanctity of life and human love, and of the indomitable human will to live. The work gives a compelling picture of the death of a great city, and of a nation beginning to disintegrate in the face of defeat; yet from its pages it is the countless vivid human vignettes that linger longest in the memory. It is an eloquent protest— never shrill, never political—against man's inhumanity to man. Above all, like every other work of art, it provides a genuine human experience that ensures that he who reads it will never be quite the same afterwards. Vissza