NIGHT TRAIN TO THE STARS

Japanese fairy tales - enchanting, enigmatic stories of animals, human beings and the great natural world. Dark and innocent, sublime and whimsical, Miyazawas stories have the ageless feel of the best fairy tales. There are animal allegories such as The Ungrateful Rat where a rude rodent insults all the objects he meets - until he meets the Rat Trap. There are morality tales such as The Restaurant of Many Orders, where two hunters become the hunted. There are also transcendent stories of childhood and mortality like Miyazawas best-known Night Train to the Stars, where a magical steam train carries children through the night and up to the heavens.These stories reveal the unique brilliance of one of Japans most beloved early twentieth-century writers.WITH A FOREWORD BY DAVID MITCHELL AND AN INTRODUCTION BY KAORI NAGAIKenji Miyazawa fables are international-class David MitchellFor readers who relish the disturbing material of fairy tale, the specificity and surprise of tanka, collisions of the everyday with the supernatural and glimpses of Japan right on the brink of industrialization, Kenji Miyazawas masterly stories will be a delight New York TimesFew works have given me so much pleasure (and hard work) as the tales of Miyazawa Kenji [...] more genuine originality, and a more universal appeal, than almost anything else I have done. John Bester, translator