The Great Passage
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Summary
The legendary "Project Genbu" at Genbu Books' editorial department sets sail! Genbu Books plans to publish a mid-sized dictionary for contemporary readers, The Great Passage, led by the erudite and meticulous scholar Professor Matsumoto. Yet his most trusted editor, Kohei Araki, has reached retirement age and chooses to go home to care for his ailing wife. The department is left with only the restless Masashi Nishioka and a temp worker, Sasaki. Araki and Nishioka search far and wide and finally find their man in sales: Mitsuya Majime, a young man who is awkward with people but has a keen sensitivity to words and an intensely dedicated work ethic. In the vast ocean of words, Majime and his colleagues spend fifteen years building a small boat bound for the far shore. They embrace solitude, yet reap a precious happiness…
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Readers interested in language, words, and dictionary compilation
- Literary fans who enjoy delicate portrayals of inner life and working routine
- Modern people seeking inner calm and deep focus amid a fast-paced life
- Readers who appreciate Japanese craftsman culture and dedication to work
Not a good fit for
- Readers seeking strong plot, fast pacing, and intense conflict
- Readers impatient with extensive technical detail and static description
Reading tips
- Read in a quiet setting to better appreciate the focused, serene atmosphere
- Use the word notes in the book to reflect on the subtle meanings of everyday words
- After finishing, leaf through a dictionary at hand—you may see it anew
About the publisher
People's Literature Publishing House publishes across classical literature, foreign literature, documentary writing and folk literature, with 492 titles in its catalogue. Representative books range from the Chinese classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms to Lao She's Teahouse and Longxu Ditch in the Selected Works of Lao She, as well as translated foreign literature such as Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Dante's Divine Comedy and Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels, alongside documentary and fictional works including Primo Levi's If This Is a Man and João Guimarães Rosa's The Devil to Pay in the Backlands. Its authors include Chinese writers such as Lao She, translators such as Shen Emeri and Li Wenjun, and foreign authors such as James Wood. Overall, the house has a strong record in editing classic works and translating foreign literature, with a publishing character that bridges Chinese and foreign writing and values textual quality.
Contents
- 版权信息
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- 五
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About the author
Miura Shion is a contemporary Japanese novelist; the Chinese edition of her work currently held in this catalog is The Great Passage. Because public information is limited, her full biography, education, and writing career are not speculated upon here. The Great Passage shows her writing focusing on ordinary people who persevere over the long term in a specialized field: a group of idiosyncratic editors at a dictionary department spend more than a decade compiling a medium-sized Japanese dictionary, and through the minutiae of revising entries and choosing paper, the weight of dedication, collaboration, and inheritance comes through. Her tone is plain and restrained, and she is skilled at portraying relationships through everyday details, making seemingly dry desk work warm and engaging. Such subject matter helps readers rediscover the labor behind language and dictionaries, and has drawn attention to her among readers of foreign literature.
Jiang Wei is an author about whom limited public information is currently available; all that is known is that a work titled The Great Passage is attributed to this name and is catalogued under foreign literature. Since details such as dates of birth and death, nationality, and English name remain unrecorded, it is difficult to give a systematic account of the author's life and writing career. As for The Great Passage, its placement in foreign literature suggests a context of translation and cross-cultural reception, possibly touching on themes of language, lexicography, or cross-cultural writing, though the specific content and stylistic features would need to be confirmed through the text itself. Given the scarcity of material, readers may treat this work as an entry point for understanding Jiang Wei's writing, focusing on its thematic orientation and narrative approach rather than rushing to construct a complete biography of the author.
