Reviews
"The Hunting Gun retains a timeless and universal relevance, reflecting on the delicate balance that truth, love and death play in all human relationships. . . A timeless, elegiac and masterful novella." -- Nancy Powell, Shelf Awareness "This slight but elegant and moving novella is a lovely introduction to a prolific Japanese writer (1907-1991) largely unknown in the West." -- Kirkus Reviews "The Hunting Gun and Life of a Counterfeiter complement each other nicely as a pair. Delicate and powerful on their own, taken together the two works form a haunting, sensitive meditation on memory as well as a wonderful introduction to a master sorely underappreciated in the West." - Music and Literature "Yasushi Inoue was one of 20th-century Japan's most prolific and garlanded authors, but few of his works are available in English. The London-based publisher, Pushkin Press, is helping to remedy this by bringing out a series of handsome new editions. Inoue's debut, The Hunting Gun , was first published in 1949. This astonishingly poised and psychologically acute novella tells the story of a doomed love affair between Saiko, a divorcee, and Misugi, her sister's husband. Like Inoue's other early novella, Bullfight , this is both a compelling drama and an oblique philosophical exploration into the essential 'solitude of the human condition.' A recurring conceit -- the 'snake' of sin that Misugi insists lies in every human heart -- would seem to speak to the national soul-searching in post-war Japan. In a self-deprecating afterword, written late in his career, Inoue laments the novella's 'very green' narrative technique and the 'youthful ungainliness' of the whole. If that's true, then this is surely the most elegantly ungainly story ever penned." -- The Independent "Concise and artful" -- Der Spiegel, "This slight but elegant and moving novella is a lovely introduction to a prolific Japanese writer (1907-1991) largely unknown in the West." -- Kirkus Reviews "Yasushi Inoue was one of 20th-century Japan's most prolific and garlanded authors, but few of his works are available in English. The London-based publisher, Pushkin Press, is helping to remedy this by bringing out a series of handsome new editions. Inoue's debut, The Hunting Gun , was first published in 1949. This astonishingly poised and psychologically acute novella tells the story of a doomed love affair between Saiko, a divorcee, and Misugi, her sister's husband. Like Inoue's other early novella, Bullfight , this is both a compelling drama and an oblique philosophical exploration into the essential 'solitude of the human condition.' A recurring conceit -- the 'snake' of sin that Misugi insists lies in every human heart -- would seem to speak to the national soul-searching in post-war Japan. In a self-deprecating afterword, written late in his career, Inoue laments the novella's 'very green' narrative technique and the 'youthful ungainliness' of the whole. If that's true, then this is surely the most elegantly ungainly story ever penned." -- The Independent "Concise and artful" -- Der Spiegel, "Three intertwined voices, three broken lives and the same bitterness underlie this cruel, cold, destructive and implacable narrative. Inoue writes hand-in-hand with Death, with a finger on the trigger" Lire "Concise and artful" Der Spiegel, "This slight but elegant and moving novella is a lovely introduction to a prolific Japanese writer (1907-1991) largely unknown in the West." -- Kirkus Reviews "The Hunting Gun and Life of a Counterfeiter complement each other nicely as a pair. Delicate and powerful on their own, taken together the two works form a haunting, sensitive meditation on memory as well as a wonderful introduction to a master sorely underappreciated in the West." - Music and Literature "Yasushi Inoue was one of 20th-century Japan's most prolific and garlanded authors, but few of his works are available in English. The London-based publisher, Pushkin Press, is helping to remedy this by bringing out a series of handsome new editions. Inoue's debut, The Hunting Gun , was first published in 1949. This astonishingly poised and psychologically acute novella tells the story of a doomed love affair between Saiko, a divorcee, and Misugi, her sister's husband. Like Inoue's other early novella, Bullfight , this is both a compelling drama and an oblique philosophical exploration into the essential 'solitude of the human condition.' A recurring conceit -- the 'snake' of sin that Misugi insists lies in every human heart -- would seem to speak to the national soul-searching in post-war Japan. In a self-deprecating afterword, written late in his career, Inoue laments the novella's 'very green' narrative technique and the 'youthful ungainliness' of the whole. If that's true, then this is surely the most elegantly ungainly story ever penned." -- The Independent "Concise and artful" -- Der Spiegel, "The Hunting Gun retains a timeless and universal relevance, reflecting on the delicate balance that truth, love and death play in all human relationships. . . A timeless, elegiac and masterful novella." -- Nancy Powell, Shelf Awareness "This slight but elegant and moving novella is a lovely introduction to a prolific Japanese writer (1907-1991) largely unknown in the West." -- Kirkus Reviews "The Hunting Gun and Life of a Counterfeiter complement each other nicely as a pair. Delicate and powerful on their own, taken together the two works form a haunting, sensitive meditation on memory as well as a wonderful introduction to a master sorely underappreciated in the West." - Music and Literature "Taut, probing style and Proustian preoccupation with memory were there from the beginning of his fiction career. . . . Inoue depicts in admirably straightforward prose the roiling waters of love, marriage, passion, and the effects of the passage of time on all three, as in his evocation of a match whose light has gone out. . . . Inoue's characters always are slaves to their fates. It's a testament to his poetic imagination that he compels us to follow them avidly as they slide forward through time, transforming as they go into creatures of memory." - Jon Sobel, Blogcritics "Yasushi Inoue's The Hunting Gun , translated by Michael Emmerich (Pushkin Press), elegantly portrays the dangerous, irresistible complexity of illicit love (and its aftermath) in letters from three women--a lover, her daughter and the abandoned wife." -- Robert Gray, Shelf Awareness "Yasushi Inoue was one of 20th-century Japan's most prolific and garlanded authors, but few of his works are available in English. The London-based publisher, Pushkin Press, is helping to remedy this by bringing out a series of handsome new editions. Inoue's debut, The Hunting Gun , was first published in 1949. This astonishingly poised and psychologically acute novella tells the story of a doomed love affair between Saiko, a divorcee, and Misugi, her sister's husband. Like Inoue's other early novella, Bullfight , this is both a compelling drama and an oblique philosophical exploration into the essential 'solitude of the human condition.' A recurring conceit -- the 'snake' of sin that Misugi insists lies in every human heart -- would seem to speak to the national soul-searching in post-war Japan. In a self-deprecating afterword, written late in his career, Inoue laments the novella's 'very green' narrative technique and the 'youthful ungainliness' of the whole. If that's true, then this is surely the most elegantly ungainly story ever penned." -- The Independent "Concise and artful" -- Der Spiegel, "The Hunting Gun retains a timeless and universal relevance, reflecting on the delicate balance that truth, love and death play in all human relationships. . . A timeless, elegiac and masterful novella." -- Nancy Powell, Shelf Awareness "This slight but elegant and moving novella is a lovely introduction to a prolific Japanese writer (1907-1991) largely unknown in the West." -- Kirkus Reviews "The Hunting Gun and Life of a Counterfeiter complement each other nicely as a pair. Delicate and powerful on their own, taken together the two works form a haunting, sensitive meditation on memory as well as a wonderful introduction to a master sorely underappreciated in the West." - Music and Literature "Taut, probing style and Proustian preoccupation with memory were there from the beginning of his fiction career. . . . Inoue depicts in admirably straightforward prose the roiling waters of love, marriage, passion, and the effects of the passage of time on all three, as in his evocation of a match whose light has gone out. . . . Inoue's characters always are slaves to their fates. It's a testament to his poetic imagination that he compels us to follow them avidly as they slide forward through time, transforming as they go into creatures of memory." - Jon Sobel, Blogcritics "Yasushi Inoue was one of 20th-century Japan's most prolific and garlanded authors, but few of his works are available in English. The London-based publisher, Pushkin Press, is helping to remedy this by bringing out a series of handsome new editions. Inoue's debut, The Hunting Gun , was first published in 1949. This astonishingly poised and psychologically acute novella tells the story of a doomed love affair between Saiko, a divorcee, and Misugi, her sister's husband. Like Inoue's other early novella, Bullfight , this is both a compelling drama and an oblique philosophical exploration into the essential 'solitude of the human condition.' A recurring conceit -- the 'snake' of sin that Misugi insists lies in every human heart -- would seem to speak to the national soul-searching in post-war Japan. In a self-deprecating afterword, written late in his career, Inoue laments the novella's 'very green' narrative technique and the 'youthful ungainliness' of the whole. If that's true, then this is surely the most elegantly ungainly story ever penned." -- The Independent "Concise and artful" -- Der Spiegel
