The Bells of Old Tokyo

An enchanting read, drawing you into Sherman's Tokyo world in a way that makes you wonder why you shouldn't fly there right this minute, with her book as the only guide you'll ever need. -- Xu Xi A tour-de-force mapping, in four dimensions, of the amazing place we call Tokyo. I realized I barely know the city . . . So much is dealt with so beautifully - Mishima, the 1945 firebombs, the tangle that is Shinjuku . . . Wonderful . . . -- Liza Dalby If a more soulful and original book on Japan has been published in the past few years, I haven't seen it. Anna Sherman ventures deep into the land and its silences with an attention to the spaces between words, a lightly worn erudition and a poetic grace - a feel for all that she doesn't have to say - that any of the rest of us might envy. This is the rare book that looks past the zany and clashing surfaces of Japan to excavate its heart, and everything we'll never be able to explain about the place, even as we bow before it. -- Pico Iyer The Bells of Old Tokyo is part personal memoir, part cultural history, but wholly unique. The fragile, fragmentary poetry of its prose so beautifully captures the transience of Tokyo time, the constant cycle of destruction and reconstruction, and the nostalgia for that which has been lost and yet wonder at all that remains to be found. It is the best book I have read about Tokyo written this century, and deserves to take its place alongside the works of Donald Richie, Edward Seidensticker and Paul Waley as one of the great interpretations of this great city. -- David Peace