- Paperback: 344 pages
- Publisher: Emblem Editions; 1st MS Trade printing edition (Oct 16 2001)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 077106862X
- ISBN-13: 978-0771068621
- Product Dimensions: 21.1 x 13.7 x 2.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 272 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #317,043 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
In Peter Oliva's novel The City of Yes, a young English teacher in Japan is infected with what his Japanese friend Endo calls "Asian Discovery Sickness," the obsession with Japan as "a prize to win or a riddle to solve." The English teacher, a Canadian who has taken a position in a fenced and asphalted suburb of Kumagaya City, is at once baffled and enthralled by culture shock: in addition to his language lessons and research, he learns to play kendo--"where you... whack the bejesus out of your opponent with a rather long bamboo sword"--and negotiates a bewildering affair with a student whose grandmother leaves messages of "sex no, sex no" on his answering machine. But even as he clings "to the idea that I would be able to discover for myself the real Japan," he finds his own story inextricably folded into the myth, history, and popular culture that connect the East and West.
The narrator's experiences are interwoven with Endo's and the 19th-century travels of Canadian adventurer Ranald MacDonald, whose journey from Alberta to Japan to British Columbia mirrors his own, and with whom he and Endo share a fascination. Together, their journeys reveal that the translation between cultures seems to lead, with unsettling humour, to a final frontier of unbridled consumerism. Santa Claus is nailed to a crucifix in a Japanese department store display. Japanese Marlboro Girls and Colonel Sanders rub shoulders with enigmatic geishas and traditional Buddhist parables. Like Oliva's highly praised first novel, Drowning in Darkness, The City of Yes masons together history and fiction, insight and well-researched detail, to evoke the intricate construction of the places we identify as home. --Karen Solie --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
“The City of Yes is a glorious literary feast.”
–Paul Quarrington
“The City of Yes is a Calvino-like intersection of art and reality, a portrait of life in which it is not the picture that is most important but the brush strokes.…Oliva has proven himself to be one of Canada’s finest literary authors.”
–Quill & Quire
“The City of Yes is a brilliant juggling act.”
–Toronto Star
“Exquisite.…Oliva’s book is a tenderly funny hymn to the romance between two cultures.”
–National Post
“[A] delightful, poignant, fully engaging story.”
–Globe and Mail
“An enchanting novel.”
–Ottawa Citizen
“A brilliant juggling act.…”
–Toronto Star
“An absorbing voyage of discovery.…”
–London Free Press
“A charming, deft and gently humorous novel.…The great beauty of this novel is its writing. Every sentence possesses polished elegance.…”
–Literary Review of Canada
“A deftly written poetical narrative.…The City of Yes is a polished and inventive novel.”
–AlbertaViews
“Brushstroke by brushstroke, Oliva builds up his evocative, unsettlingly comic, ambiguously straightforward stories.”
–Canadian Forum
“The sense of the surreal is created equally by Oliva’s blending of myth and story and by his fine lyrical style.…”
–Hamilton Spectator
“Oliva is such a good and persuasive writer – compassionate, funny, and gifted with an eye for arresting images – that The City of Yes …more than lives up to the bold affirmative of its title.”
–Bill Richardson, Georgia Straight
“Rewarding. . . . Funny and touching.…”
–Edmonton Journal
–Paul Quarrington
“The City of Yes is a Calvino-like intersection of art and reality, a portrait of life in which it is not the picture that is most important but the brush strokes.…Oliva has proven himself to be one of Canada’s finest literary authors.”
–Quill & Quire
“The City of Yes is a brilliant juggling act.”
–Toronto Star
“Exquisite.…Oliva’s book is a tenderly funny hymn to the romance between two cultures.”
–National Post
“[A] delightful, poignant, fully engaging story.”
–Globe and Mail
“An enchanting novel.”
–Ottawa Citizen
“A brilliant juggling act.…”
–Toronto Star
“An absorbing voyage of discovery.…”
–London Free Press
“A charming, deft and gently humorous novel.…The great beauty of this novel is its writing. Every sentence possesses polished elegance.…”
–Literary Review of Canada
“A deftly written poetical narrative.…The City of Yes is a polished and inventive novel.”
–AlbertaViews
“Brushstroke by brushstroke, Oliva builds up his evocative, unsettlingly comic, ambiguously straightforward stories.”
–Canadian Forum
“The sense of the surreal is created equally by Oliva’s blending of myth and story and by his fine lyrical style.…”
–Hamilton Spectator
“Oliva is such a good and persuasive writer – compassionate, funny, and gifted with an eye for arresting images – that The City of Yes …more than lives up to the bold affirmative of its title.”
–Bill Richardson, Georgia Straight
“Rewarding. . . . Funny and touching.…”
–Edmonton Journal
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