Hofu-Mifa Book Club on Zoom

All readers are welcome to join us as we read and discuss books with an emphasis on Japanese culture/history with our friends in Hofu, Japan and members of MIFA.  Discussions will be on the second Thursday of the month at 7:30 pm Monroe local time and 8:30 am Friday Hofu local time.  This month we will be discussing Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe. The meeting will be held on Zoom.  Please email david.ross@monroe.lib.mi.us for the meeting password.

MIFA - Monroe International Friendship Association

Summary: In this famous postwar Japanese novel, the first of Abe's to be translated into English, Niki Jumpei, an amateur entomologist in pursuit of a rare specimen of beetle, wanders into a strange seaside village, whose residents all live in sandpits. He is taken prisoner, and, along with a widow cast out by the community, he is forced to move into her sandpit and continually shovel away the sand that threatens to take over the village. In Niki's struggles to escape his prison and his developing relationship with the woman, he gradually comes to understand the existential nature of life