Before Hiroshima: The Confession of Murayama Kazuo and Other Stories

As death approaches, an old Japanese man finds it necessary to clean his soul, to confront the mistakes of his youth, and to confess about a time when he might have been able to save the thousands who died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The title novella is complemented by Suspended: Five Stories. In the rest of the collection, through Barkan’s beautifully direct style and canny ability to enter the mind, the reader gets to know a wide range of characters intimately. In Forty, a man from Boston travels to a wildlife refuge in Uganda, seeking to overcome a personal crisis. In Suspended, an amnesiac in Hawaii attempts to discover his real identity. Shanghaied features two lonely co-workers searching for love and excitement while on vacation. Banana Bat tells of a newlywed couple, honeymooning in Costa Rica, working to patch up an already faltering marriage. And in The Warrior, a young man falls in love with a woman whose fiance committed suicide following the Gulf War.