Hearsay
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Readers who enjoy Junichi Watanabe's emotional fiction and want to read it concentrated in short form
- Adult readers interested in fiction on relations between men and women, extramarital affairs, and worldly life
- Commuters who prefer short story collections of moderate length that can be read in segments
- Literature lovers who want to observe urban emotions and human nature through multiple short stories
Not a good fit for
- Underage readers; the sexual themes and adult emotional content are unsuitable for them
- Readers sensitive to sexual content who wish to avoid it
- Readers who prefer long, continuous narratives and are unaccustomed to the fragmented structure of short story collections
Reading tips
- Read story by story following the table of contents; pause after each to savor the character relationships and the lingering resonance of the ending.
- You may begin with "Rumor" and "Afternoon Farewell" to sense the thematic tone, then skip to the other stories as interest dictates.
- When reading的情节 involving extramarital affairs or extortion, pay attention to how the author advances the characters' psychology layer by layer rather than just following the story.
- Treat the nine stories as a set of urban emotional slices, and after finishing, look back at how each title resonates with its theme.
About the publisher
Founded in 1987, Qingdao Publishing House has long focused on education, science and technology, children's books, and lifestyle titles, while steadily publishing classical and foreign literature. Its 827 titles in the catalog reflect a balance between making classics widely accessible and serving young readers. They include the four great classics of Chinese literature—Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Dream of the Red Chamber, and Journey to the West—as well as foreign literary translations such as Sei Shōnagon's The Pillow Book, works associated with Zhou Zuoren, and Victor Hugo's Les Misérables. The press also offers a color-illustrated series of recommended classics for primary and secondary school Chinese curriculum reading, using pictures and text to support student readers. Its common categories cover classical literature, essays and miscellaneous writings, folk literature, and foreign literature, with authors including Luo Guanzhong, Shi Nai'an, Cao Xueqin, Gao E, Wu Cheng'en, Sei Shōnagon, Zhou Zuoren, and Victor Hugo. Public information is limited, so this profile emphasizes the publishing directions shown by the catalog.
Contents
- 版权信息
- 译者前言
- 午后的诀别
- 银座的黄昏
- 非致命伤
- 岁 月
- 托 腮
- 风 闻
- 秋 凉
- 香 袋
- 春 怨
FAQ
Which short stories are collected in "Rumor", and is the theme unified?
Is this book suitable for underage readers?
Does a short story collection need to be read in order from beginning to end?
Comments
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About the author
Junichi Watanabe (1933–2014) was a contemporary Japanese novelist. Born in Hokkaido and holding a medical doctorate from Sapporo Medical University, he worked as an orthopedic surgeon before turning to writing. In 1970 he won the Naoki Prize for The Shadow of Light. His work spans social fiction, essays and inspirational writing, and the library holds 61 of his titles, including Lost Paradise, Shadowless Lamp, The Lover, Pain Begins When Love Begins, Aging Gracefully, Paradise of Desire, Winter Fireworks and Love Letter. Trained in medicine, he observed love, marriage and aging with a cool, precise eye, writing candidly about desire and human predicament; he is regarded as a master of modern Japanese romantic literature, while his later essays reflect plainly and warmly on life experience and old age.
Shi Weiguo, a native of Weifang, Shandong, is a literary translator and scholar of language and culture. He earned a Doctor of Literature from Tokyo Metropolitan University and a doctorate in language and culture from Daito Bunka University, has lived in Japan for more than thirty years, and formerly taught at Aichi University of Education, a national university in Japan. He has long been engaged in translating Japanese literature, with renderings of Masaki Tarihara's Remaining Snow and Blood and Sand and Junichi Watanabe's Betrayal, among others. In 2017 he received a special translation award from the Japan Translators Association, the first Chinese translator to be so honored. His seven works in the library include Pain Begins When We Love, Rumors, Snow Falls on Tokyo, The Reason for Breaking Up, the Fengyun series When Cherry Blossoms Bloom, and Lipstick and Eraser, mostly classified as foreign literature and prose, dealing with emotion, urban life, and human entanglement, with translations that strive to preserve the original tone and detail.
