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Tun-huang

Author Yasushi Inoue
Preface by Damion Searls
Translated by Jean Oda Moy
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Paperback
$18.95 US
New York Review Books | NYRB Classics
On sale Nov 09, 2010 | 240 Pages | 9781590173626
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Tun-Huang, in Central Asia, is a walled city along the Silk Road that historically connected China to the West. It is also the site of the Thousand Buddha cave where, in the early 1900s, Sir Aurel Stein discovered an extraordinary treasure trove of early Buddhist sutras and other scriptures. In Tun-Huang the novel, the great modern Japanese novelist Yasushi Inoue imagines how the scriptures came to be hidden in the caves. Set in the eleventh century CE, this is the story of Chao Tsing-te, a young Chinese man whose accidental failure to take the test that would have qualified him for a career as a government bureaucrat leads to a chance encounter that takes him farther and farther into the wild and contested lands west of the Chinese Empire. There he finds love, distinguishes himself in battle, and finally devotes himself to the strange task that led to the rediscovery of the scriptures so many centuries later. A book of magically vivid scenes, fierce passions, and astonishing adventures to equal Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Tun-Huang is also a profound and stirring meditation on the mystery of history and the hidden presence of the past.

“A true historical imagination is exceedingly rare, and [Tun-Huang] is a superb example of such an imagination at work.” –Robert Payne, Asia

“Historical reconstruction of a very personal and special kind.” –Donald Richie

“A work of superb historical imagination, Tun-Huang, in which he recreates eleventh-century China and the great collection of Buddhist treasures concealed in the Tun-Huang caves.” –James Kirkup, The Independent

“One of the most respected novelists in Japan.” –The New York Times

Yasushi Inoue (1907–1991) was born on Hokkaidō, Japan’s northernmost island, the eldest child of an army medical officer. After a youth devoted to poetry and judo, Inoue sat, unsuccessfully, for the entrance exam to the Kyushu Imperial University Medical School. He would go on to study philosophy and literature at Kyoto Imperial University, writing his thesis on Paul Valéry. In 1935, newly married and with an infant daughter, Inoue became an arts reporter for the Osaka edition of the Mainichi News. Following the Second World War, during which he briefly served in north China, he published two short novels, The Hunting Gun and The Bullfight (winner of the Akutagawa Prize for literature). In 1951 Inoue resigned from the newspaper and devoted himself to literature, becoming a best-selling and tremendously prolific author in multiple genres. Among his books translated into English are The Hunting Gun, The Roof Tile of Tempyō, and The Blue Wolf: A Novel of the Life of Chinggis Khan. In 1976 the emperor of Japan presented Inoue with the Order of Culture, the highest honor granted for artistic merit in Japan.

Jean Oda Moy was born in Washington State and spent her early years in Seattle, moving to Japan shortly before the outbreak of World War II. She is also the translator of Yasushi Inoue’s Chronicle of My Mother and Shirobamba: A Childhood In Old Japan.

Damion Searls is a translator from German, French, Norwegian, and Dutch and a writer in English. His own books include What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going, The Inkblots, and The Philosophy of Translation. He received the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize in 2019 for Uwe Johnson's Anniversaries.

Yasushi Inoue View titles by Yasushi Inoue

About

Tun-Huang, in Central Asia, is a walled city along the Silk Road that historically connected China to the West. It is also the site of the Thousand Buddha cave where, in the early 1900s, Sir Aurel Stein discovered an extraordinary treasure trove of early Buddhist sutras and other scriptures. In Tun-Huang the novel, the great modern Japanese novelist Yasushi Inoue imagines how the scriptures came to be hidden in the caves. Set in the eleventh century CE, this is the story of Chao Tsing-te, a young Chinese man whose accidental failure to take the test that would have qualified him for a career as a government bureaucrat leads to a chance encounter that takes him farther and farther into the wild and contested lands west of the Chinese Empire. There he finds love, distinguishes himself in battle, and finally devotes himself to the strange task that led to the rediscovery of the scriptures so many centuries later. A book of magically vivid scenes, fierce passions, and astonishing adventures to equal Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Tun-Huang is also a profound and stirring meditation on the mystery of history and the hidden presence of the past.

“A true historical imagination is exceedingly rare, and [Tun-Huang] is a superb example of such an imagination at work.” –Robert Payne, Asia

“Historical reconstruction of a very personal and special kind.” –Donald Richie

“A work of superb historical imagination, Tun-Huang, in which he recreates eleventh-century China and the great collection of Buddhist treasures concealed in the Tun-Huang caves.” –James Kirkup, The Independent

“One of the most respected novelists in Japan.” –The New York Times

Author

Yasushi Inoue (1907–1991) was born on Hokkaidō, Japan’s northernmost island, the eldest child of an army medical officer. After a youth devoted to poetry and judo, Inoue sat, unsuccessfully, for the entrance exam to the Kyushu Imperial University Medical School. He would go on to study philosophy and literature at Kyoto Imperial University, writing his thesis on Paul Valéry. In 1935, newly married and with an infant daughter, Inoue became an arts reporter for the Osaka edition of the Mainichi News. Following the Second World War, during which he briefly served in north China, he published two short novels, The Hunting Gun and The Bullfight (winner of the Akutagawa Prize for literature). In 1951 Inoue resigned from the newspaper and devoted himself to literature, becoming a best-selling and tremendously prolific author in multiple genres. Among his books translated into English are The Hunting Gun, The Roof Tile of Tempyō, and The Blue Wolf: A Novel of the Life of Chinggis Khan. In 1976 the emperor of Japan presented Inoue with the Order of Culture, the highest honor granted for artistic merit in Japan.

Jean Oda Moy was born in Washington State and spent her early years in Seattle, moving to Japan shortly before the outbreak of World War II. She is also the translator of Yasushi Inoue’s Chronicle of My Mother and Shirobamba: A Childhood In Old Japan.

Damion Searls is a translator from German, French, Norwegian, and Dutch and a writer in English. His own books include What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going, The Inkblots, and The Philosophy of Translation. He received the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize in 2019 for Uwe Johnson's Anniversaries.

Yasushi Inoue View titles by Yasushi Inoue

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