Hunting rifle

Author's name: Yasuji Inoue Publisher: Dar Al-Karma for Publishing and Distribution Number of pages: 112 "A testimony to the power of words on the page – for calming, enlightening, and destroying" – "American Book Review" "Reveals the consequences of a romantic relationship without melodrama – the truth, without any deception" – "Publishers Weekly" "His great compassion makes him turn the study of human nature into a deep art… He knows how to make the smallest details have a significant impact… a remarkable work" – "Irish Times" The novel "Hunting Rifle" deals with the consequences of a tragic love affair, narrated through three letters addressed by three different women to the man himself: first "Shoko," who discovers the relationship through reading her mother's diaries; then "Midori," who had long been aware of her husband's relationship with "Saiko"; and finally "Saiko" herself. "Hunting Rifle" is an ideal model of conciseness. In oscillation between the explicit and the implicit, it reaches a carefully balanced equilibrium, reflecting the delicate romantic game linked by a very thin thread, which connects the fates of the four characters – the man and the three women – and accompanies them over the years without disturbing the quiet rituals of their lives. Nevertheless, the novel brims with constant tension, with a controlled silence and subdued anger that does not erupt until the end, when every lie is revealed, every emotion is completed, and we realize that each person has a secret life that we will never fully understand. The novel won the Akutagawa Prize, Japan's highest literary award, and has been translated into more than twenty languages. We present it for the first time in Arabic, translated faithfully from Japanese by Maisara Afifi.