Horses, Horses, in the End the Light Remains Pure - (Weatherhead Books on Asia) by Hideo Furukawa (Paperback)

About the Book

A fusion of fiction, history, and memoir that replicates the experience of trauma and its effect on memory in ways reminiscent of Nabokov's Speak, Memory and Sebald's The Rings of Saturn.

Book Synopsis

"As we passed from the city center into the Fukushima suburbs I surveyed the landscape for surgical face masks. I wanted to see in what ratios people were wearing such masks. I was trying to determine, consciously and unconsciously, what people do in response. So, among people walking along the roadway, and people on motorbikes, I saw no one with masks. Even among the official crossing guards outfitted with yellow flags and banners, none. All showed bright and calm. What was I hoping for exactly? The guilty conscience again. But then it was time for school to start. We began to see groups of kids on their way to school. They were wearing masks."

Horses, Horses, in the End the Light Remains Pure is a multifaceted literary response to the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown that devastated northeast Japan on March 11, 2011. The novel is narrated by Hideo Furukawa, who travels back to his childhood home near Fukushima after 3/11 to reconnect with a place that is now doubly alien. His ruminations conjure the region's storied past, particularly its thousand-year history of horses, humans, and the struggle with a rugged terrain. Standing in the morning light, these horses also tell their stories, heightening the sense of liberation, chaos, and loss that accompanies Furukawa's rich recollections. A fusion of fiction, history, and memoir, this book plays with form and feeling in ways reminiscent of Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory and W. G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn yet draws its own, unforgettable portrait of personal and cultural dislocation.

Review Quotes

Horses, Horses is an essential text from one of Japan's most prolific and inventive novelists, likely to remain important long beyond our current five-year remove from the events of 3/11.-- "Asymptote"

Horses, Horses, in the End the Light Remains Pure is an emotional, historical and, above all, literary triumph that really must be experienced first-hand.... An absolute must-read.--Alice French "Japan Society Review"

Furukawa's documentary-cum-novel is a response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster that disorients even as it coheres. Featuring fictional characters come to life and a ravaged landscape, Horses, Horses is a profoundly unsettling take on our transience.-- "Lit Hub"

Literary balm for the pain of 2016, Hideo Furukawa's Horses, Horses, in the End the Light Remains Pure is a triumph of imagination.... This is a book that will stay with you.-- "Japan Times"

There's a lot to reflect on in Horses, Horses. It's a powerful, stirring, and deeply personal commentary on the tragedy of 3/11. It's also a literary intervention of prodigious quality.--Hans Rollman "PopMatters"

Unexpected and rewarding for ambitious readers.-- "Library Journal"

This novel, which depicts the 3/11 triple disaster in northeastern Japan in all its complexity, is a marvel. Furukawa's austere writing is as sober as it is inventive and as elegiac as it is hopeful.--Davinder Bhowmik, author of Writing Okinawa: Narrative Acts of Identity and Resistance

About the Author

Hideo Furukawa is a novelist based in Tokyo. He has received the Noma Literary New Face Prize, the Mystery Writers of Japan Award, the Japan SF Grand Prize, and the Yukio Mishima Award. He is also author of the novel Belka, Why Don't You Bark? (2012), translated into English by Michael Emmerich.

Doug Slaymaker is professor of Japanese at the University of Kentucky.

Akiko Takenaka is associate professor of Japanese history at the University of Kentucky.