Requiem by Shizuko Go (.ePUB)
File Size: 1.8 MB
Requiem by Shizuko Go, Geraldine Harcourt (translator)
Requirements: .ePUB reader, 1.8mb
Overview: “It was darker with her eyes open.” Sixteen-year-old Setsuko has been a passionate believer in Japan’s war effort, putting her heart into letters to frontline soldiers and doing munitions work with such dedication that she sacrifices her health. At the same time, she is the only girl in the school to befriend Naomi, the free-spirited daughter of an imprisoned opponent of the war. Naomi regrets she cannot be more like Setsuko the model student; Setsuko admires her plucky younger friend as she is; and their shared diary is a lively counterpoint of divided loyalties. fervor and skepticism, grief and hope.
As the reality of war inexorably overwhelms these two young lives, Setsuko’s world is indeed “darker with her eyes open.” After the August 1945 surrender—the ultimate disillusionment—she lies alone in a makeshift air-raid shelter while tender memories of those she has lost and a questioning conscience light the way to death.
Author Shizuko Gō was Setsuko’s age in 1945, but it was not until 1972 that she wrote this intensely moving and thoughtful requiem for the “military nation girls.” Its appeal against militarism is all the more powerful because voiced by one who, as a child, embraced the war as her own. Few novels of the home front have so imaginatively transformed a chronicle of suffering into a search for meaning that has far-reaching implications for women and men in every country.
Requiem, Shizuko Gō’s first published work, was awarded the Akutagawa Prize.
Genre: Fiction > General Fiction/Classics
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