Yuko Akita had two passions. Haiku and snow. It is
April 1884 and Yuko Akita has reached his seventeenth
birthday on the Island of Hokkaid in the North of Japan.
The time has come to choose his vocation, warrior or
monk, but against the wishes of his father, Yuko settles
on a third option: he will be a poet. Yuko begins to
write the seventeen-syllable poems we know as haiku-all
celebrating the beauty of snow, his one great subject.
One day, the Imperial Poet arrives from the Emperor's
court. He has heard about the beauty of Yuko's poems and
has come to meet the young poet himself. While agreeing
the poems have a music all their own, the Imperial Poet
notes that lacking color, Yuko's poems are destined to
remain invisible to the world. If the young poet is to
learn color, he must study with the great artist Soseki
in the south of Japan. Yuko sets off on a treacherous
journey across the whole of Japan. Cold, hungry, and
exhausted, he encounters a vision that will forever
change his life. It is a woman, frozen in the ice. With
pale gold hair, ice blue eyes and a face as white as
snow, the dead beauty will obsess Yuko. Who was she? How
did she come to meet her death in the depths of his
beloved snow? Arriving at Soseki's door, Yuko is shocked
to discover that the great master of color is blind. He
will gradullay come to learn that color is not something
outside of us, but within us. He will also learn about
his master's Samurai past . . . and Soseki's link to the
woman in the snow. It is a beautiful love story which
will have its echo in Yuko's own as he finds his own,
living, daughter of snow . . . With stunning visual
images created out of minimalist prose, Snow is as
delicate and inspiring as the haiku poetry it celebrates
and emulates. A swift and refreshing read, the novel
treats readers to a gorgeous love story while gently
floating ideas such as what is the nature of art and
perception?
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