Hotel Iris A Novel
Hotel Iris A Novel by Yoko Ogawa, published by Picador on March 30, 2010, is a literary exploration of complex relationships set against the backdrop of a crumbling seaside hotel in Japan. The story follows seventeen-year-old Mari, who works at the front desk while her mother manages the off-season guests. After an encounter with a middle-aged man and a prostitute, Mari becomes intrigued by the man’s voice, leading her into a world of desire and seduction that challenges her understanding of intimacy.
As Mari visits the man, a widowed translator rumored to have a dark past, she is drawn into a realm that intertwines pain and pleasure. The narrative delves into themes of desire and the complexities of human connection, as Mari navigates her relationship with the translator while contending with her controlling mother. This edition of Hotel Iris, consisting of 176 pages, invites readers to reflect on the untranslatable nature of love and the sometimes tumultuous expressions of intimacy.
Official synopsis Publisher
A tale of twisted love from Yoko Ogawa—author of The Diving Pool and The Housekeeper and the Professor.
In a crumbling seaside hotel on the coast of Japan, quiet seventeen-year-old Mari works the front desk as her mother tends to the off-season customers. When one night they are forced to expel a middle-aged man and a prostitute from their room, Mari finds herself drawn to the man’s voice, in what will become the first gesture of a single long seduction. In spite of her provincial surroundings, and her cool but controlling mother, Mari is a sophisticated observer of human desire, and she sees in this man something she has long been looking for.
The man is a proud if threadbare translator living on an island off the coast. A widower, there are whispers around town that he may have murdered his wife. Mari begins to visit him on his island, and he soon initiates her into a dark realm of both pain and pleasure, a place in which she finds herself more at ease even than the translator. As Mari’s mother begins to close in on the affair, Mari’s sense of what is suitable and what is desirable are recklessly engaged.
Hotel Iris is a stirring novel about the sometimes violent ways in which we express intimacy and about the untranslatable essence of love.
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