Wuthering Heights in Postwar Japan

Mizae Mizumura

Several people have emailed the blog about this article - A True Novel - recently published in The Japan Times. French Literature scholar Mizae Mizumura has updated Wuthering Heights and relocated it to Japan soon after the Second World War, which brings to mind novels by David Peace like Occupied City. Mizumura's novel is described as 'a real page-turner' and also 'in some respects, more interesting' (!) The article continues: 'A True Novel is mostly told by a servant named Fumiko to a young man she happens to meet, who tells it in turn to a character called Minae Mizumura, a novelist writing a book not unlike this one and living a life not unlike the novelist Minae Mizumura’s. Fumiko is certainly Mizumura’s Ellen Dean, but Scheherazade seems present as well. Fumiko is as unreliable a narrator as Ellen Dean, and just as some have seen Ellen Dean, rather than Heathcliff, as the true villain of Bronte’s novel, so it is hard to find Fumiko blameless...'

Translation into English is by Juliet Winters Carpenter. Reviews welcome. Thanks to Paul Daniggelis, Naoko Ota and Keiko Abe for informing us.

Article can be read in full here.