{"product_id":"thorn-puller","title":"Thorn Puller","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner of the Sakutaro Hagiwara Prize and the MurasakiShikibu Prize\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eCaught between two cultures, award-winning author Hiromi Ito tackles subjects like aging, death, and suffering with dark humor, illuminating the bittersweet joys of being alive.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe first novel to appear in English by award-winning author Hiromi Ito explores the absurdities, complexities, and challenges experienced by a womancaring for her two families: her husband and daughters in California and her agingparents in Japan. As the narrator shuttles back and forth between these twostarkly different cultures, she creates a powerful and entertaining narrativeabout what it means to live and die in a globalized society.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIto has been described as a “shaman of poetry” because of her skill in allowing the voices of others to flow through her. Here she enriches her semi-autobiographical novel by channeling myriad voices drawn from Japanese folklore, poetry, literature, and pop culture. The result is a generic chimera—part poetry, part prose, part epic—a unique, transnational, polyvocal mode of storytelling. One throughline is a series of memories associated with the Buddhist bodhisattva Jizo, who helps to remove the “thorns” of human suffering.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MediaPlace","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57313258799486,"sku":"NW9781737625308","price":12.78,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1379\/1261\/files\/9781737625308.jpg?v=1778591717","url":"https:\/\/mediaplace.com\/products\/thorn-puller","provider":"MediaPlace","version":"1.0","type":"link"}