Tampopo Dokei / Original Title: the DANDELION CLOCK

[Machine Translation] Alex, a painter at the height of his career, is revisiting a small Italian town for the first time in decades to sell his childhood home before the culmination of his career to date, an exhibition in London. He spent his childhood exploring this natural countryside with his best friend Jamie and an older girl, Anna. Fragments of Alex's memories bring back the glorious days that bound the three of them together in an incomprehensible way - and the fateful day he met the wounded "hermit" in the abandoned church that defined it all. Reminiscence and the present intersect, and a breathtakingly beautiful and cruel story emerges in the space between them. The author, who has been called a precocious genius, has refined the beauty of the novel's structure to present a masterpiece of maturity.

キャリアの絶頂にある画家のアレックスはこれまでの集大成となるロンドンでの展覧会を前に、幼少期を過ごした自宅を売却するため、数十年ぶりにイタリアの小さな町を再訪する。彼は幼き日に、この自然豊かな田園地帯を親友のジェイミーと年上の少女アンナとともに探検した。アレックスの記憶の断片は、三人を理解不能なまでに深く結びつけた輝かしい日々をよみがえらせる―そしてすべてを決定づけた、廃教会で傷ついた“隠者”と出会った運命の日のことも。追憶と現在が交錯し、そのあわいに息を呑むほど美しく残酷な物語が浮かびあがる。きらめくような愛惜と心震わせる郷愁が描き出す、早熟の天才と謳われた著者が小説の構造美を磨きあげて贈る円熟の傑作。