Laura Imai Messina, author of the bestseller What we leave to the windlaunches the novel in Bucharest The secret lives of colorsappeared in the “Raftul Denisei” collection, translated by Cristina Gogianu, a charming fresco of traditional Japanese rituals and ceremonies in a love story between a young woman with the gift of seeing colors imperceptible to others and a man who learns to recognize them through her descriptions.
The beloved Italian author established in Tōkyō will be in Bucharest from April 25-27, at the invitation of the Humanitas Fiction Publishing House and the “Angela Hondru” Romanian-Japanese Studies Center of the Romanian-American University.
Thursday, April 25, 7 p.m. Humanitas Bookstore from Cișmigiu (Bld. Regina Elisabeta no. 38) Release of the novel The secret lives of colors. The event will be attended by Laura Imai Messina, Șerban Georgescu, the director of the Department of Asian Studies of the Romanian-American University, the journalist Cătălin Striblea and Denisa Comănescu, the director of the Humanitas Fiction Publishing House. Access is free, within the limits of available places, based on a reservation through Eventbook.
Friday, April 26, 11.30 am. The Center for Romanian-Japanese Studies “Angela Hondru” within the Romanian-American University (Bld. Exhibition no. 1B) Laura Imai Messina will have a dialogue with the students and professors of the center, with the theme “Colors of life in Tōkyō by a European writer”. Access is free.
Friday, April 26, 6:30 p.m. Italian Institute of Culture (alea Alexandru no. 41)Dialogue between Laura Imai Messina and the translators of her novels, What we leave to the wind – Smaranda Bratu-Elian, and The secret lives of colors– Cristina Gogianu, with the theme “Literature between two worlds: Italy and Japan”. Access is free.
“The secret lives of colorsmore than a novel in which style plays a central role and which describes a fascinating and distant country, is one of formation: following the meeting between the two young people and the evolution of their relationship, we witness the change of perspective of each: this will make them and one, and the other to see reality in other colors.” — The Book Club.
Mio has always been known to perceive the world in infinitely more detailed nuances than those around her. In the family workshop, where traditional wedding kimonos have been dyed, cut and dressed for generations, she understood, since childhood, that each color has its secrets, and since then she has not stopped looking for them. For Aoi, colors have a hidden life, less the shades of black, which he learned to decline to the last through the job inherited from his father, of leading people through the darkest day, that of death. A story about family, love and, above all, what it means to look at the world through the other's eyes is born from the meeting of the two, by chance and not really.
