First published 2017
Jonathan captures the photograph that could launch his career: a Vietnamese soldier staring through village chaos as flames consume the surrounding buildings. The image will become iconic, but what Jonathan witnesses proves unbearable. He abandons Vietnam and drifts to Tokyo, seeking anonymity in the sprawling metropolis. There he turns his camera toward peacetime subjects: commuter crowds, subway platforms, cherry blossoms in bloom. He meets Kumiko and photographs her obsessively, documenting their relationship through countless frames taken on city streets, in summer heat, during rainstorms. Jonathan believes he has found refuge and purpose in this foreign city. Yet his past refuses to stay buried. The famous photograph haunts him, along with the weight of what he recorded and his role as witness to that Vietnamese village. Deeper memories surface too, events from long before the war that shaped who he became. Jonathan must confront his responsibility as someone who documents suffering and his complicity in the stories his camera tells.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, 20th-century, contemporary, 21st-century, photography
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Tokyo, Vietnam
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
224 pages · Paperback · Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Content warnings: violence, war