The Bone Clocks now ticking in bookstores
Hardcover, Php1199 at National Bookstores
David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks is finally in stores. There are limited copies, though, so if you want the hardcover, hurry.
As we predicted, The Bone Clocks didn’t make the Booker longlist. The Booker Prize went to Australian author Richard Flanagan for The Narrow Road to the Deep North, a novel about the prisoners of war who were put to work constructing the Burma railway. (Yes, that railway in The Bridge on the River Kwai with Alec Guinness and the recent The Railway Man with Colin Firth.) Here’s an excerpt.
The title of Flanagan’s novel is borrowed from the 17th century Japanese poet Basho’s most famous work, a travelogue in haiku. The opening lines from Basho:
Days and months are travellers of eternity. So are the years that pass by. Those who steer a boat across the sea, or drive a horse over the earth till they succumb to the weight of years, spend every minute of their lives travelling. There are a great number of ancients, too, who died on the road. I myself have been tempted for a long time by the cloud-moving wind — filled with a strong desire to wander.
It was only towards the end of last autumn that I returned from rambling along the coast. I barely had time to sweep the cobwebs from my broken house on the River Sumida before the New Year, but no sooner had the spring mist begun to rise over the field than I wanted to be on the road again to cross the barrier-gate of Shirakawa in due time. The gods seem to have possessed my soul and turned it inside out, and roadside images seemed to invite me from every corner, so that it was impossible for me to stay idle at home. Even while I was getting ready, mending my torn trousers, tying a new strap to my hat, and applying moxa to my legs to strengthen them, I was already dreaming of the full moon rising over the islands of Matsushima. Finally, I sold my house, moving to the cottage of Sampû for a temporary stay. Upon the threshold of my old home, however, I wrote a linked verse of eight pieces and hung it on a wooden pillar. The starting piece was:
Behind this door
Now buried in deep grass,
A different generation will celebrate
The Festival of Dolls.
Translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa. Read 9 Translations of the Opening Paragraph.
Two of Mitchell’s novels are set in Japan, so there’s the connection.
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