Today, the town's historical district is protected by Japanese law. It is an extensive area encompassing 323 houses and other hongawara-buki (traditional buildings) recognised for their immense cultural value. Many of them still have their traditional lattice windows and curved tile roofs, architectural features that were symbols to passers-by of the owners' prosperity. They include five soy sauce shops and six Kinzanji miso makers that are still active. Visiting them tells the remarkable story of the intertwined fortunes of Kinzanji miso and soy sauce.
But Evison complicates and enriches the narrative by providing not only a backstory for each of his passengers, but a historical explanation for why each of them are here. In many ways, his characters represent archetypical stories, but they are infused with humanity in his capable hands. While one set of stories are all taking place on the train in 2019, the others all occur in mid-19th-century America.
Combining mystery with a soupçon of fantasy, the supernatural and literary fiction, Shepherd delivers an insightful story about obsession — the things that give us comfort, yet can agitate us, how an obsession can guide a person, or destroy you. “The Cartographers” also is a tale of families, the unshakeable bonds of parents and children, of true friendships that withstand any adversary, of unconditional love and a valentine to libraries. Even when “The Cartographers” dips into “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” territory, Shepherd keeps the tenets of mysteries paramount.
With each book, her scope seems to widen, and Pure Colour ushers the reader further from roman à clef or autobiography and closer to a kind of speculative philosophy or myth.
Jeffers engages with a richness of Black life and history far beyond her characters’ proximity to whiteness alone. By tracing the African American experience back to its roots, she has created a canon-worthy work that exposes the complexity of color and the deep wounds passing superficially attempts to address.
“Disorientation” does what great comedies and satires are supposed to do: make you laugh while forcing you to ponder the uncomfortable implications of every punchline.
In On Consolation: Finding Solace in Dark Times, the distinguished Canadian historian and political theorist Michael Ignatieff reflects on the consequences of the enduring disruption in the metaphysical supply chain that had connected countless generations to hope. The book could hardly arrive at a more critical moment. Though conceived in 2017, it was shaped and shaded by the explosion of the novel coronavirus into our lives a few years later.
Since the 13th century, when the Suffolk coastline by Dunwich began to be seriously gnawed by the waves, thousands of settlements have disappeared from our maps. It is the untold story of these lost communities – “Britain’s shadow topography” – that has become Green’s obsession. He disinters their rich history and reimagines the lives of those who walked their streets, revealing “tales of human perseverance, obsession, resistance and reconciliation”. By doing so, he makes tangible the tragedy of their loss and the threat we all face from the climate crisis on these storm-tossed islands.