Distant Thunder
Multi-cultural fiction, Anthologies, Environment
Synthetic audio, Automated braille
Summary
Winner of the Noma Prize for New WritersSet in rural Japan at the height of the bubble economy, Distant Thunder tells of a farming village gradually effaced by urbanization, corruption, and greed. After Matsuzo Wada has sold off the family's… lands and left his wife for another woman, his son Mitsuo is determined to support himself and his mother in the traditional manner, farming. All that remains of his ancestors' lands is a hothouse, in which he grows tomatoes to sell to the housewives from the nearby apartment complex, built on a former rice field. When his childhood friend, Koji, becomes entangled in an adulterous love affair which ultimately destroys him and those around him, Mitsuo begins to see how the town's hedonistic excesses are laying to waste not only the landscape, but also the communal and familial bonds and the values that once sustained them all.Translated from the Japanese by Lawrence J. Howell and Hikaru Morimoto.