Hut of Fallen Persimmons (The Americas Series)

In a station of the metro in Rio de Janeiro, where both live, illustrator Haruki and artisan Celina meet by chance--and soon decide, however improbably, to travel together to Japan. Their shared destination: the famous Rakushisha, or Hut of Fallen Persimmons, where seventeenth-century haiku master Matsuo Bash? once stayed. Their trip to Kyoto provides a context for each to meditate on the past, their feelings for each other, and questions of cultural difference. Through a counterpoint of narration and text, the pair's losses and struggles gradually unfold.
Bash?'s haiku brilliantly mold the novel's structure . Bash?'s translator in Brazil, readers learn, is Haruki's great unrequited love, and Celina's sad eyes conceal a tragedy in her own life. In this exquisitely woven novel, meant to be cradled in both hands as the Japanese might hold a precious object, the characters' every gesture, reflection, and self-revelation are manifest.