The Cake Tree in the Ruins (Pushkin Collection)
Intensely moving stories that tell of the absurd violence of war, and tenderly depict the animals and children caught in its vortex.
In 1945, Akiyuki Nosaka watched the Allied firebombing of Kobe kill his adoptive parents, and then witnessed his sister starving to death. The shocking and blisteringly memorable stories of The Cake Tree in the Ruins are based on his own experiences as a child in Japan during the Second World War.
They are stories of a lonely whale searching the oceans for a mate, who sacrifices himself for love; of a mother desperately trying to save her son with her tears; of a huge, magnificent tree which grows amid the ruins of a burnt-out town, its branches made from the sweetest cake imaginable.
Profound, heartbreaking and aglow with a piercing beauty, they express the chaos and terror of conflict, yet also how love can illuminate even the darkest moment.
In 1945, Akiyuki Nosaka watched the Allied firebombing of Kobe kill his adoptive parents, and then witnessed his sister starving to death. The shocking and blisteringly memorable stories of The Cake Tree in the Ruins are based on his own experiences as a child in Japan during the Second World War.
They are stories of a lonely whale searching the oceans for a mate, who sacrifices himself for love; of a mother desperately trying to save her son with her tears; of a huge, magnificent tree which grows amid the ruins of a burnt-out town, its branches made from the sweetest cake imaginable.
Profound, heartbreaking and aglow with a piercing beauty, they express the chaos and terror of conflict, yet also how love can illuminate even the darkest moment.
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Community Reviews
The fact Nosaka can conjure up so much powerful emotion in a mere ten pages a pop is quite frankly magic. This is a heartbreaking exploration of the trauma of war, a collection of 12 stories that will inevitably break you, all set on the 15th August 1945 when Japan surrendered. I had to take a break between each one for something a little lighter as a palette cleanser and, whilst some tales are softened with a pinch of magical realism, others are painfully stark on the realism.
The opening whale story remains my favourite, honestly I think that whale will haunt me to my dying day. As will the final story’s last paragraph.
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