Floating Clouds

Fumiko Hayashi

Share |

Paper, 328 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-13629-7
$25.00 / £17.50

February, 2006
Cloth, 328 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-13628-0
$35.00 / £24.00

"Lane Dunlop's superb translation of Fumiko Hayashi's most celebrated postwar novel presents a striking portrait of a woman struggling amidst the social dislocations of the era. Floating Clouds captures the sense of rupture that pervaded personal trajectories and reflects the capacity of individuals to reconstruct hope and meaning among the debris of broken dreams." — Joan Ericson, Colorado College, author of Be a Woman: Hayashi Fumiko and Modern Japanese Women's Literature

"Floating Clouds, one of Fumiko Hayashi's late masterpieces, draws from the store of her own remarkable experiences in its depiction of the chaotic, uncertain, wounded worlds of postwar Japan. With a poignantly simple prose style, gracefully translated by Lane Dunlop, she captures the tumult of the time, the arrogance of colonialism, and the impotence of defeat." — Rebecca Copeland, Washington University in St. Louis, author of Lost Leaves: Women Writers of Meiji Japan

"The novel effectively conveys the troubling ramifications of the Japanese occupation of Indochina during World War II." — Library Journal

"It is fitting that [Dunlop] give us this important novel in its first trustworthy and readable English edition." — The Japan Times

"A remarkable book." — Scott Bryan Wilson, Rain Taxi

"A sprawling portrait of Japan just after the end of World War II . . . Lane Dunlop’s translation is excellent." — Janine Beichman, The Japan Journal

Series

• Japanese Studies Series

About the Author

Fumiko Hayashi (1904–1951) was a novelist, poet, and short story writer both critically and popularly loved in Japan. Widely heralded as one of the most important Japanese novelists of the twentieth century, she is also the author of the novel, Hōrōki. Lane Dunlop is also the translator of the anthology A Late Chrysanthemum: Twenty-One Stories from the Japanese, two novellas by Nagai Kafū, and a short story collection by Kawabata Yasunari. He was awarded an Academy Award in Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

top of page