قصة الكتاب :
Kōdansha, 2014. 309 pp. ¥1,800. ISBN 978-4-06-219065-7.
Kishimoto Sachiko
Born in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1960. After graduating from university
and working for a liquor manufacturer, became known for
translations of works including The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker,
Almost No Memory by Lydia Davis, No One Belongs Here More Than
You by Miranda July, Edwin Mullhouse by Steven Millhauser, and
Flying Leap by Judy Budnitz. Won the Kōdansha Essay Award for
Nenimotsu taipu [The Kind to Hold a Grudge].

This original anthology consists of 12 short stories by contemporary Japanese
writers on the theme of love. In a piece of untranslatable word play, the book’s
title includes the invented word “strange love” (hen’ai), which puns on a common
word for “love” (ren’ai). The two are also visually similar, with the former written
as 変愛 and the latter as 恋愛. Kishimoto Sachiko, popular as a translator of
English fiction into Japanese,
has already edited and translated two original anthologies
of contemporary British and American short stories on the topic, but
this collection takes a Japanese
perspective. In line with Kishimoto’s wishes, the
12 contemporary Japanese writers chosen have penned their own stories of strange
love.For Kishimoto, hen’ai can be a grotesque, extreme, or bizarre kind of love removed
from the usual standards. As these stories show, though, it is in fact, paradoxically,
the ultimate form of pure love. The anthology features young authors
Motoya Yukiko, Murata Sayaka, and Kinoshita Furukuri; Kawakami Hiromi,
Tawada Yōko, and Hoshino Tomoyuki, key writers in the prime of their careers;
and veterans Tsushima Yūko and Yoshida Tomoko. It offers a vivid cross-section
of the diversity of the current Japanese literary scene. (NM)