A new selection and translation of short stories by a hugely prominent classic Japanese writer, filled with eroticism and fantasy. The sage Confucius travels to a kingdom ruled by a struggling duke, whose pursuit of virtue is threatened by his consort's desire for pleasure. A naïve servant elopes with his master's daughter, only to be plunged headlong into a world of murder and corruption. Exhausted by a lifestyle of never-ending debauchery, a young prince finds himself in possession of a dazzling, beguiling mermaid. These three short stories, in a gorgeous new translation by Bryan Karetnyk, distil the essence of Jun'ichiro Tanizaki's shorter fiction: the co-mingling of Japanese and Chinese mythologies, the chillingly dark side of desire and the paper-thin line between the sublime and the depraved.
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According to the chronicles of Zuo Quiming and Meng Ke, of Sima Qian and others, at the beginning of spring in the year 493 before our common era, in the thirteen year of Duke Ding's reign in the state of Lu, when the ruler was celebrating the Festival of the Heavens and Earth, Confucius, together with a handful of disciples attending his carriage, left the land of his birth place to preach the Way abroad.
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(@PushkinPress, 28 September 2023, e-book, 192 pages, ARC from the publisher via @edelweiss_squad)
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I really enjoyed The Siren's Lament which consists of three stories, fantasy stories with rich, colourful detail and larger than life characters. The stories are all different though they do have similarities and are set in similar fantastical world's. The title story, The Qiln is the best story and by far the most detailed, but all three stories are very good. I enjoyed these so much I wanted to read more and was disappointed the collection only has three stories.