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Shipwrecks / Akira Yoshimura ; translated from the Japanese by Mark Ealey.
LIBRA PL865.O72 H3313 2000 copy 2
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LIBRA - Special PL865.O72 H3313 2000
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- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Yoshimura, Akira, 1927-2006
- Standardized Title:
- Hasen. English
- Language:
- English
- Japanese
- Subjects (All):
- Yoshimura, Akira, 1927-2006--Translations into English.
- Yoshimura, Akira.
- Yoshimura, Akira, 1927-2006.
- Boys--Japan--Fiction.
- Boys.
- Shipwrecks--Japan--Fiction.
- Shipwrecks.
- Manners and customs.
- Japan--Social life and customs--To 1600--Fiction.
- Japan.
- Genre:
- Fiction.
- Bildungsromans.
- Translations.
- Penn Provenance:
- Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copies 1 & 2)
- Physical Description:
- 180 pages ; 21 cm
- Edition:
- First Harvest edition.
- Place of Publication:
- San Diego : Harcourt, 2000.
- Summary:
- Isaku is a nine-year-old boy living in a remote, desperately poor fishing village on the Japan Sea coast. To save the family from starvation, his father has sold himself into indentured servitude, leaving Isaku and his strong-willed mother to care for three younger children. Forced to grow up well before his time, Isaku is faced with a number of mysteries, not least among them his own nascent sexuality and the legend of O-fune-sama - the merchant ships that wreck offshore from time to time, providing the village with unexpected bounty: rice, wine, and rich, unheard-of delicacies.
- The villagers catch barely enough fish to subsist on, and distill salt from seawater to sell to other villages. But this industry serves another, more sinister purpose: they hope the fires of the salt cauldrons will lure passing ships toward the shore and onto rocky shoals. When a ship runs aground, they slaughter the crew and loot the cargo. As the end of his father's bondage approaches - the day Isaku has been waiting for - a ship founders on the rocks, and the villagers rejoice. But its cargo is not at all the manna of their hopes.
- Notes:
- "A Harvest book."
- This English translation originally published : 1996.
- ISBN:
- 0156008351
- 9780156008358
- OCLC:
- 43436990
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