Trinity, Trinity, Trinity
A Novel
Published on 28. June 2022
240 pages
978-1-6626-0116-3 (ISBN)
Description
A literary thriller about the effects of nuclear power on the mind, body, and recorded history of three generations of Japanese women.
Nine years after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster, Japan is preparing for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. An unnamed narrator wakes up in a cold, sterile room, unable to recall her past. Across the country, the elderly begin to hear voices emanating from black stones, compelling them to behave in strange and unpredictable ways. The voices are a symptom of a disease called "Trinity."
As details about the disease come to light, we encounter a thread of linked histories-Prometheuss stealing fire from the gods, the discovery of radiation, the nuclear arms race, the subsequent birth of nuclear energy, and the disaster in Fukushima. The threads linking these events begins to unravel in the lead-up to a terrorist attack at the Japan National Olympic Stadium.
A work of speculative fiction reckoning with the ramifications of the past and the continued effects of nuclear power, Trinity, Trinity, Trinity follows the lives of three generations of women connected by a history of violence.
Nine years after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster, Japan is preparing for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. An unnamed narrator wakes up in a cold, sterile room, unable to recall her past. Across the country, the elderly begin to hear voices emanating from black stones, compelling them to behave in strange and unpredictable ways. The voices are a symptom of a disease called "Trinity."
As details about the disease come to light, we encounter a thread of linked histories-Prometheuss stealing fire from the gods, the discovery of radiation, the nuclear arms race, the subsequent birth of nuclear energy, and the disaster in Fukushima. The threads linking these events begins to unravel in the lead-up to a terrorist attack at the Japan National Olympic Stadium.
A work of speculative fiction reckoning with the ramifications of the past and the continued effects of nuclear power, Trinity, Trinity, Trinity follows the lives of three generations of women connected by a history of violence.
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06/2022
Astra House
€41.16
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Erika Kobayashi is a novelist and visual artist based in Tokyo. Kobayashi creates works that are inspired by things invisible to the eye: time and history, family and memory, and the traces left in places. She was awarded the 44th Japan Sherlock Holmes Club Encouragement Award in 2022 for her novel His Last Bow (Kodansha,) the 7th Tekken Heterotopia Literary Prize in 2020 for her novel Trinity, Trinity, Trinity (Shueisha,) and won the the 2022-2023 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prizes (JUSFC) for the English translation of Japanese literature for Trinity, Trinity, Trinity, translated by Brian Bergstrom. Trinity, Trinity, Trinity is her latest novel and her story collection Sunrise: Radiant Stories, is forthcoming from Astra House in 2023.
TRANSLATOR BIO: Brian Bergstrom is a lecturer and translator who has lived in Chicago, Kyoto, and Yokohama. His writing and translations have appeared in publications including Granta, Aperture, Lit Hub, Mechademia, Japan Forum, positions: asia critique, and The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories. He is the editor and principal translator of We, the Children of Cats by Tomoyuki Hoshino (PM Press), which was longlisted for the 2013 Best Translated Book Award. His translation of Trinity, Trinity, Trinity by Erika Kobayashi (Astra House, 2022) won the 2022 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission (JUSFC) Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. He is currently based in Montréal, Canada.
TRANSLATOR BIO: Brian Bergstrom is a lecturer and translator who has lived in Chicago, Kyoto, and Yokohama. His writing and translations have appeared in publications including Granta, Aperture, Lit Hub, Mechademia, Japan Forum, positions: asia critique, and The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories. He is the editor and principal translator of We, the Children of Cats by Tomoyuki Hoshino (PM Press), which was longlisted for the 2013 Best Translated Book Award. His translation of Trinity, Trinity, Trinity by Erika Kobayashi (Astra House, 2022) won the 2022 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission (JUSFC) Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. He is currently based in Montréal, Canada.
