Floating clouds

Fumiko Hayashi tells the powerful story of tormented love and one woman’s struggle to navigate the cruel realities of postwar Japan. The novel’s characters, particularly its resilient heroine, Koda Yukiko, find themselves trapped in their own drifting, unable to break out of the morass of indecisiveness. Set in the years during and after World War II, their lives and damaged psyches reflect the confusion of the times in which they live.