Sweet Bean Paste: The International Bestseller
Sentaro is a man well acquainted with disappointment. A criminal record, a drinking habit, and a writing career that never was, his days blur together in a cramped little confectionery shop in Japan, where he sells dorayaki, small pancakes stuffed with sweet bean paste. The cherry blossoms come and go. Not much else does. Then Tokue arrives. She's elderly, her hands are visibly marked by hardship, and her past holds shadows she hasn't spoken aloud in years. She also makes the finest sweet bean paste Sentaro has ever encountered. What begins as a simple kitchen arrangement quietly transforms into something far more tender. She teaches him her craft; he finds himself changed by it. Their growing friendship, though, exists against a backdrop of social judgement that proves difficult to outrun, and when Tokue's secret finally surfaces, the consequences are genuinely wrenching. Durian Sukegawa writes with a restrained, luminous quality that makes even the smallest moments feel weighted with meaning. This is a novel about guilt and gentleness, about the way the past clings to a person, and about the strange grace that can pass between two unlikely companions. Cecelia Ahern called it 'story heaven', and it's hard to argue. Translated into English for the first time, it's the sort of book that stays with you long after you've closed it.
- Author: Durian Sukegawa
- Publisher: Oneworld Publications
- Genre: Historical Fiction
- ISBN: 978-1786071958
- Pages: 224 pages