Territory of Light, Yuko Tsushima
Territory of Light, Yuko Tsushima
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Territory of Light
A Novel

Author: Yuko Tsushima, Geraldine Harcourt

Narrator: Rina Takasaki

Unabridged: 5 hr 49 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/12/2019


Synopsis

From one of the most significant contemporary Japanese writers, a haunting, dazzling audiobook of loss and rebirth.

“Yuko Tsushima is one of the most important Japanese writers of her generation.” —Foumiko Kometani, The New York Times

I was puzzled by how I had changed. But I could no longer go back . . .

It is spring. A young woman, left by her husband, starts a new life in a Tokyo apartment. Territory of Light follows her over the course of a year, as she struggles to bring up her two-year-old daughter alone. Her new home is filled with light streaming through the windows, so bright she has to squint, but she finds herself plummeting deeper into darkness, becoming unstable, untethered. As the months come and go and the seasons turn, she must confront what she has lost and what she will become.

At once tender and lacerating, luminous and unsettling, Yuko Tsushima’s Territory of Light is an audiobook of abandonment, desire, and transformation. It was originally published in twelve parts in the Japanese literary monthly Gunzo, between 1978 and 1979, each chapter marking the months in real time. It won the inaugural Noma Literary Prize.

About Yuko Tsushima

Yuko Tsushima was born in Tokyo in 1947, the daughter of the novelist Osamu Dazai, who took his own life when she was one year old. Her prolific literary career began with her first collection of short stories, Shaniku-sai (Carnival), which she published at the age of twenty-four. She won many awards, including the Izumi Kyoka Prize for Literature (1977), the Kawabata Prize (1983), and the Tanizaki Prize (1998). She died in 2016.

About Geraldine Harcourt

Geraldine Harcourt was awarded the 1990 Wheatland Translation Prize and the 2019 Lindsley and Masao Miyoshi Translation Prize. She had a close working relationship with Yuko Tsushima, and translated many of her works into English. Harcourt lived in New Zealand, where she died in 2019.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Ilse on March 01, 2019

Mothering in Japan Looking down at the stagnant green water, I could picture as in a dream or a film that spot as it had appeared back then, some fifteen years earlier: a spot clad in flowers and fruit trees, where the sunshine seemed to have congealed. It was bright and tranquil, disquietingly so. N......more

Goodreads review by Jim on May 16, 2020

CONTAINS SPOILERS This is the story of the struggles of a single mother in Tokyo. (I have a single-mother shelf.) After she has separated from her husband (she wants a divorce) she chances upon an opportunity to rent the entire fourth floor of a small office building, all windows, that she often lea......more

Goodreads review by María on January 28, 2021

*Ganadora del Premio Noma* Esta es mi primera lectura de 2021 y no puedo sentirme más afortunada. Yuko Tsushima, la autora de este libro, me ha acompañado en unos momentos muy difíciles. Consiguió transmitirme algo de la luz de la que habla en su novela, reconfortándome de una manera que aún no lleg......more

Goodreads review by Meike on June 18, 2023

I was fascinated by this quietly told, subtle tale about control and the demand to function. When a young woman is left by her husband, she becomes the only provider for her 2-year-old daughter and has to juggle numerous, often contradictory expectations: She has to hold down her job at a library wh......more

Goodreads review by Matteo on August 13, 2021

Videorecensione: [URL not allowed] Da tempo volevo leggere qualcosa di Yuko Tsushima, autrice ritenuta tra le penne più potenti del Giappone pre-Murakami, nonché figlia dello straordinario Osamu Dazai. Conosciuta per i suoi ritratti di donne che spesso si ritrovano sole e abbandonate in u......more


Awards

  • Kirkus Prize Finalists
  • Hudson Booksellers Best of the Year
  • Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year