The Bear and the Paving Stone

Winner of the prestigious Akutagawa Prize three dream-like tales of memory and war: part of our Japanese novella series showcasing the best contemporary Japanese writingA Japanese man far from home travels the countryside of Normandy with a friend - talking about war literature and everything in between. As his ideas of his life become more entangled with his personal writing the pangs of his past and his half-forgotten memories overlap and threaten his peace. Owing a debt to French writers from La Fontaine to Proust the three fable-like tales in The Bear and the Paving Stone are stories of loss memory and a longing to belong.