The Summer House - by Masashi Matsuie (Paperback)

About the Book

"This prize-winning debut novel offers a compelling, insightful portrait of modern Japan through a group of architects competing to design a major new building in Tokyo. Tåoru Sakanishi is a recent university graduate who joins the prestigious Murai Office, a small architecture firm founded by Shunsuke Murai, former student of Frank Lloyd Wright. A sensitive and observant narrator, Sakanishi is captivated by the artistic quality and careful consideration the Murai Office shows to each of its designs. As the sweltering summer months approach, the Murai Office migrates from Tokyo to Kita-Asama, a mountain village and artists' colony whose heyday has passed. There, this small team of architects, including two women who Sakanishi is clumsily attracted to, set out to design the National Library of Modern Literature, competing against a rival firm that snaps up one government project after the next. Beautifully translated by National Book Award-winner Margaret Mitsutani, The Summer House is a character-driven story with prose that highlights the natural beauty of Japan, the ingenuity of architecture, and the clashing of modernity and tradition"--

Book Synopsis

This prize-winning debut novel offers a compelling, insightful portrait of modern Japan through a group of architects competing to design a major new building in Tokyo.

Tōru Sakanishi is a recent university graduate who joins the prestigious Murai Office, a small architecture firm founded by Shunsuke Murai, former student of Frank Lloyd Wright. A sensitive and observant narrator, Sakanishi is captivated by the artistic quality and careful consideration the Murai Office shows to each of its designs.

As the sweltering summer months approach, the Murai Office migrates from Tokyo to Kita-Asama, a mountain village and artists' colony whose heyday has passed. There, this small team of architects, including two women who Sakanishi is clumsily attracted to, set out to design the National Library of Modern Literature, competing against a rival firm that snaps up one government project after the next.

Beautifully translated by National Book Award-winner Margaret Mitsutani, The Summer House is a character-driven story with prose that highlights the natural beauty of Japan, the ingenuity of architecture, and the clashing of modernity and tradition.

Review Quotes

"Elegantly understated...Matsuie, renowned as an editor (of Haruki Murakami, among other writers) before becoming an author, delivers a simple but graceful tale that's full of intriguing asides on architecture...A novel packed with ideas about art, life, and love."--Kirkus Reviews

"Matsuie's Yomiuri Prize for Literature-winning debut examines the influence of Western culture on postwar Japan and the clash of modernity and tradition." --Library Journal (starred review)

"The more I read, the more I fell in love with this beautiful novel...Its foremost charm is the fluent, clean-cut use of words. Nothing in Matsuie's descriptions is superfluous, nor is anything missing, and the refreshing vitality of his prose is impressive...The birth of such a writer is cause for celebration." --Hiromi Kawakami, author of Strange Weather in Tokyo and The Nakano Thrift Shop

About the Author

Masashi Matsuie began his literary career as a fiction editor for the Shinchosha Publishing Company, where he worked with writers such as Yoko Ogawa, Banana Yoshimoto, and Haruki Murakami and launched Shincho Crest Books, an imprint specializing in translations of foreign works. His debut novel, The Summer House, received the Yomiuri Prize for Literature, an award that normally goes to seasoned authors who are well along in their careers.

Margaret Mitsutani is a translator of Yoko Tawada and Japan's 1994 Nobel Prize laureate Kenzaburō Ōe. She was a finalist for the National Book Award for her translation of Yoko Tawada's Scattered All Over the Earth and winner of the National Book Award for her translation of Yoko Tawada's The Emissary.