Faint Landscape of Mountains (Deluxe Collector's Edition)

Wandering through a dream in the fog,
What lies at the end of memory?
 
Nobel Prize in Literature laureate
──Kazuo Ishiguro──
His acclaimed debut novel
A journey of salvation across time and memory
 
Introduction to Ishiguro's works by Wu Ming-Yi, novelist and professor in the Department of Chinese Literature at National Dong Hwa University
 
★Adapted into a film supervised by the author, directed by rising Japanese director Kei Ishikawa,
Starring Suzu Hirose and Fumi Nikaido

Etsuko, a widow living in England for many years, reunites with her daughter Niki after the suicide of her eldest daughter, Keiko. Through fragmented conversations, Etsuko slowly recalls her past in Nagasaki, Japan, after World War II. At that time, the trauma of the atomic bomb seemed distant, everything was thriving, and Etsuko, preparing for a new baby, met the mysterious mother and daughter, Sachiko, who lived in a riverside village house.

At that time, life was peaceful, orderly, and fulfilling. Sachiko, decisive in her actions, was preparing to move to America with her child and lover to start a new life, which filled Etsuko with joy from the bottom of her heart. However, the clues revealed by all the oral memories became increasingly perplexing... Moving back and forth between the vibrant English countryside and the dilapidated streets of postwar Nagasaki, sorrow enveloped everything like a thin mist – when one is trapped within it, how can one heal the wounds and allow life to move forward?

At this moment, why think of that person—
After all that has happened, why question past choices?

This book is Kazuo Ishiguro's first work, told from the first-person perspective of Etsuko, a Japanese widow who immigrated to England, detailing her inner world before and after the war and her sorrowful life. The novel intertwines past and present, with one fragmented scene after another flashing by, intricate and complex. However, even if the broken fragments are piled up obscurely, they never lose their authenticity – that is the "truth" that one constantly remembers, refuses to forget, and cannot shake off.

“The fact that I’ve never really returned to Japan has actually allowed my imagination of that country to become even more vivid and personal… My desire was to reconstruct my Japan in fiction, to put it in place, so that I could then point to a book and say – yes, this is my Japan, it’s right in here.” – Kazuo Ishiguro