قصة الكتاب :
Kōdansha, 2014. 307 pp. ¥1,600. ISBN 978-4-06-218774-9.
Murata Kiyoko
Born in Fukuoka Prefecture in 1945. Won the Akutagawa Prize in
1987 for Nabe no naka [trans. In the Pot]. Novels include Shiroi yama
[White Mountain] (winner of the 1990 Women’s Literature Prize),
Kanionna [Crab Woman] (winner of the 1997 Murasaki Shikibu
Prize for Literature), and Bōchō [Fiddler Crabs] (winner of the 1998
Kawabata Yasunari Prize for Literature). Received the Noma Prize
for Literature for Kokyō no wagaya [Back Home] in 2010 and the
Yomiuri Prize for Literature for Yūjo kō [Study on Prostitutes] in 2014.

The man who comes to deal with the rain leak is large, middle-aged, and apparently
surly. However, the housewife narrator is drawn to the way he silently goes
about his work. Finally, he opens up and begins to talk about the hardships of his
rooftop job and the importance of tiles in protecting Japanese-style houses from
rain. His wife died 12 years earlier and he has suffered from neurosis, sometimes
driven to the point of wanting to fling himself from a roof in the middle of a job.
To get through the crisis, he began keeping a dream diary; he says he now knows
a way to have the dreams he wants to.
Intrigued by the man’s words, the narrator, usually proud of being a deep sleeper
who never dreams, becomes aware of the dream world. Under the roofer’s tutelage
she begins to meet him while asleep and the two go on journeys together. They
fly from Japanese temples to Gothic cathedrals in France, in a series of trips taking
them from large building to large building. For the narrator, it is an experience
of freedom and adventure away from her husband and high-school-aged son.
However, strong feelings begin to grow between the narrator and the roofer, and
they go beyond being simply dream companions.
With a light touch, the author deftly captures the shifting emotions of a
housewife yearning for liftoff from everyday life and outlines a fantastical version
of love. This feeling emerges at the mysterious borderlands of love, “where materialism,
lust, and anything like ego vanish along with the body.” (NK)