Mandala Road

Book excerpt: Two generations of the Nonezawa family – Asafumi and his wife Shizuka, and Asafumi’s grandfather Rentarō and his Malayan lover Saya – are connected across the years by the mysterious Mandala Road, which simultaneously casts Asafumi and Rentarō from their respective ages into a haunting post-apocalyptic world. As becomes apparent, Asafumi, Rentarō, Saya, and Shizuka are all, in their own way, on a private journey to discover and reconcile themselves with their memories of violence, both seen and experienced, as they struggle to understand themselves, unearth the emotions they have repressed, and learn to live with a past that seems always to be too close behind them.