Sandakan Brothel #8: An episode in the history of lower-class Japanese women

Rating:
Summary: What is a Life?
Review: Sometimes when reading or thinking or, simply, being direct witness to the casual cruelty that God is so evidently fond of, we feel a small bubble become loosened in the vicinity of our inner soul and, rising and expanding, it reaches surface and our faces spontaneously contract and our eyes fill with tears and we must sit quietly for a moment and, in my case, wish that we could smash that God squarely in it's hellish face. But it passes and we are again back in the normal universe where we understand that things just are. The reader of this book has more than one opportunity for such experience. The slightly elitest tone of the author does not detract, but offers some hope, that we may grow up. The translation, as well as I can judge having lived only four years in Hiroshima, is superb.