Lieutenant Lookeast and Other Stories by Masuji Ibuse (.ePUB)
File Size: 2 MB
Lieutenant Lookeast and Other Stories by Masuji Ibuse
Requirements: .ePUB reader, 2 MB
Overview: The ten stories in this volume cover a wide range of moods and subjects, from cattle breeding to tomb robbery, from satire to fable. The title story tells of a local eccentric, a demented martinet who returns from the war with symptoms of brain damage. Is it shell shock, the villagers wonder, or – a more exciting possibility – congenital syphilis? The truth which emerges is more squalid, yet curiously moving. This bathetic figure, a scruffy clown, becomes a symbol for the higher lunacy of war. Pilgrim’s Inn’ is a sharply etched vignette of society’s callousness towards the individual, while Old Ushitora’, a story about the delicate sensibility of the son of a stud-farmer, is bucolic comedy with a cutting edge. Through concentration on the patterns of Japanese rural existence, Ibuse probes into human reaction and motives – and regards his discoveries with a wry astonishment. His style is elusive, dry, and ironic, but the apparent diffidence of his narrative technique is deceptive. The observation is acute and the approach oblique, but the voice that emerges is among the most powerful in contemporary literature.
Genre: Fiction > General Fiction/Classics
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