The Story Archive

Flowers in Limbo

Sōkyū Gen'yū · 2001 CE · Short Story · Japanese · Contemporary

A priest in a small Japanese town deals with a woman who claims healing powers and with a community weighed by sickness, in the forty-nine days Buddhist belief gives between death and rebirth. Its author is himself a practising Rinzai Zen priest. The novella won the Akutagawa Prize and is among the few prizewinners to write from inside monastic life.

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