Hunting rifle

The novel "Shooting Rifle" deals with the consequences of a tragic love relationship, narrated through three letters addressed to the man himself by three different women: first "Shoko," who discovers the relationship by reading her mother's diaries, then "Midori," who was aware for a long time of her husband's relationship with "Saiko," and finally "Saiko" herself. "Shooting Rifle" is considered an ideal model of brevity. And in oscillation between the explicit and the implicit, it reaches a precise balance, reflecting the suspended romantic game with a very thin thread, which links the fates of the four protagonists – the man and the three women – and accompanies them over the years without disturbing the calm rituals of their lives. Nevertheless, the novel boils with constant tension, with self-control and subdued anger that does not erupt until the end, when every lie is uncovered, every emotion is completed, and we realize that every person has a secret life that we will never fully understand. The novel won the "Akutagawa" Prize, the highest literary award in Japan, 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.