One Morning Like a Bird

One Morning Like a Bird

by Andrew Miller (Author)

Synopsis

1940. Tokyo. Japan is at war with China, and Yuji Takano is clinging to the life he has made for himself as a young poet - the company of his friends, the monthly meetings of the French Club at Monsieur Feneon's house, the days of writing and contemplation made possible by an allowance from his father, a professor at Tokyo's elite Imperial university...But the world is closing in on Yuji. His father is disgraced, the allowance is scrapped, and the threat of conscription is coming ever closer. And then there is Monsieur Feneon's nineteen-year-old daughter Alissa, a girl with her own very definite ideas of what she wants, and whose fate becomes inextricably bound up with Yuji's. In hauntingly evocative prose, Andrew Miller tells a timeless story about growing up and growing free of self-delusions, about following the heart and making the right choices in life. Vividly conveying its setting, he also draws a fascinating portrait of a bygone Tokyo and of Japan at a critical juncture in its history.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 384
Publisher: Sceptre
Published: 04 Sep 2008

ISBN 10: 0340825146
ISBN 13: 9780340825143

Media Reviews
'Miller's delicate prose most closely recalls the tone of emotional restraint in Kazuo Ishiguro's early novels ... Crisply defined characters offer a foil to Yuji's progressive ruminations, which Miller deftly coheres into a typically bittersweet resolution.' -- James Urquhart, Independent on Sunday 'Miller's Japanese characters are densely believable, and his recreation of their world is a real achievement' -- Christopher Tayler, Guardian 'The frank simplicity of Miller's prose, and his search for truth in the reality of the quotidian feels (to this Western reader) convincingly Japanese. Miller places his words and plot developments carefully, like the smooth grey pebbles of a Zen garden, with all but the most essential adjectives weathered away. There are moments of beauty, truth and irony.' -- Helen Brown, Daily Telegraph 'Detail by delicate detail Miller conjures Yuji's dim, mysterious world of gradual dissolution. -- Natalie Sandison, The Times 20080913 'Not only does he combine delicious literary conceits with thought-provoking explorations into the human condition, he has the rare gift of tossing out perfect sentences that make you stop in your tracks' -- Claire Allfree, Metro 20080913 'beneath the smoothly civilised surface of this novel, catastrophe and violence are always simmering' -- Sunday Times 20081019
Author Bio
Andrew Miller was born in Bristol in 1960. He has lived in Spain, Japan, Ireland and France, and currently lives in Somerset. His first novel, INGENIOUS PAIN, was published by Sceptre in 1997 and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Grinzane Cavour prize in Italy. His second novel, CASANOVA, was published in 1998, followed by OXYGEN, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award and the Booker Prize in 2001, and THE OPTIMISTS, published in 2005.