@brittarnhild
Quiet here doesn´t mean that I don´t read. It might even be the contrary. I do read quite a lot, but the last few weeks no new country has been "visited". We have recently visited The Republic of Georgia, and my reading list has mostly contained books from and about this very interesting country. We have been back home for a few days now. I still continue with my Georgian books, but slowly I am turning my eyes to other litterature as well. Like The Briefcase. In a couple of weeks my reading group will meet again, and the book we will discuss then is Hiromi Lawakami´s The Briefcase.
I have already visited Japan on my Visiting the World Through Books - project, so I can´t add it to the books from the world´s countries list, but this does not prevent me from blogging about it here of course :-)
The Briefcase, such a beautiful, sweet and at the same time sad love story. 38 years old Tsukiko, sitting alone in a bar, drinking sake. One night her old teacher, 30 years her senior, comes into the bar. They start to talk, and a dire friendship slowly starts to develop. Tsukiko´s loneliness is the main palette of the book. The loneliness, and the difficulties, she, we, humans, have to talk about what really matters. Through sake, through food, through the seasons and finally through Tsukiko and Sensei´s dates, we are drawn into the most beautiful and bittersweet love story.
All seen through Tsukiko´s eyes.