The Bear and the Paving Stone

Winner of the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, three dream-like tales of memory and war: part of our Japanese novella series, showcasing the best contemporary Japanese writing A Japanese man, far from home, travels the countryside of Normandy with a friend _ talking about war, literature, and everything in between. As his ideas of his life become more entangled with his personal writing, the pangs of his past and his half-forgotten memories overlap and threaten his peace.