cover image Floating Clouds

Floating Clouds

Fumiko Hayashi. Columbia University Press, $35 (303pp) ISBN 978-0-231-13628-0

This poignant masterpiece tracks the ill-fated affair of Koda and Tomioka as they struggle to survive in the tumultuous years of WWII. Koda meets and falls in love with Tomioka while working in southern Vietnam, but the two go their own directions when the war ends. When they reunite, both changed by the devastation of warfare and the effects of time, they desperately court connection in a violently displaced world.