Outside Tokyo, a tuberculosis sanatorium in the village of K has a six-bed ward that the narrator, an aspiring poet, shares with a student of linguistics and budding writer named Shiomi. After the stubborn Shiomi insists on undergoing a dangerous surgical procedure and dies in the process, two notebooks turn up in his bedsheets. "Flowers of Grass" unfolds as the narrator reads them, asking himself if Shiomi's death was a sort of suicide, and learning the details of his late friend's two great loves: for a brother and sister, both of whom reject him.Fukunaga himself spent seven years recuperating from tuberculosis following World War II, and drew on his own experiences to create a fully realized portrait of a young man of fastidious intelligence and great sorrow, and how it is possible, seeing reality from the side of death and despair, to still choose life.

Flowers of Grass is Takehiko Fukunaga's fully realized portrait of a young man of fastidious intelligence and great sorrow, and shows us how it is possible, seeing reality from the side of death and despair, to still choose life.

About the Author
Royall Tyler has a B.A. in Far Eastern Languages from Harvard, and an M.A. in Japanese History and Ph.D. in Japanese literature from Columbia University. He has taught Japanese language and culture at, among other places, Ohio State University, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of Oslo, in Norway. Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1757 to Royall Tyler and Mary (Steele) Tyler, Tyler attended the Boston Latin School, Yale and then Harvard, where he earned a reputation as a quick-witted joker. After graduation, he briefly served in the Massachusetts militia under John Hancock during the abortive Rhode Island expedition. In late 1778, he returned to Harvard to study law, and was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1780. He opened a practice in Braintree, Massachusetts, eight miles outside of Boston. After a brief stint in suppressing the 1787 Shays's Rebellion, Tyler moved to Boston and boarded in the house of Elizabeth Palmer. After unsuccessfully courting Abigail Adams for many years, in 1794, he wed the Palmers's daughter, Mary Palmer, took her to his new home in Vermont, and with her had eleven children. In 1801, Tyler was appointed to the Supreme Court of Vermont as an assistant judge, and was later elected chief justice. In 1812 he ran unsuccessfully for the US Senate. In 1826, he died in Vermont, of facial cancer that he had suffered from for ten years.


Book Information
ISBN 9781564787149
Author Takehiko Fukunaga
Format Paperback
Page Count 225
Imprint Dalkey Archive Press
Publisher Dalkey Archive Press
Weight(grams) 290g
Dimensions(mm) 202mm * 141mm * 17mm