Пенталогия.
Aki Shimazaki sets the general plot in different places and times in order to weave multiple stories, to cover up and disclose the motives through the volumes and to reveal their complexity even more strongly. Each of her books can be read separately without plunging the reader into an entanglement of incomprehensible situations if they didn’t start by reading Azami. Each book is a facet of the same story, but with protagonists whose outlines are drawn so precisely that they deepen each time.

With a hard-hitting writing style and short sentences, Aki Shimazaki weaves a narrative in which the reader follows a successful company boss, an organic farmer, a bookseller with a double life, and a family man whose daily life is a little bleak. As in all the author’s books, nature takes a prominent position, like a character in its own right. It’s a tale of everyday life but one in which Aki Shimazaki addresses, with apparent candour, powerful themes like homosexuality, family secrets, and the weight of social structures imposed by a highly normative Japanese society.