The Samurai's Garden

Just finished reading The Samurai's Garden by Gail Tsukiyami. Probably oyeceter has already covered this in a better way, but if you missed her comments, let me say that this is a lovely book. Not about traditional samurai, it's the story of a young Chinese man sent to recover from TB in a Japanese village in 1938, as the Japanese conquest of China, including the rape of Nanking, rumbles in the background. The characters are true and clearly pictured and the style is simple and direct. It is so different from our own time and yet so much the same. The foreground of the courage and failure of human relationships is always shadowed by the unseen war.