First of all, my gratitude to #NetGalley and #ColumbiaUniversityPress for the opportunity to read #Eclipse (an already highly acclaimed novel by Japanese author Keiichiro Hirano--now translated for publication in the US on 11/12/2024). I was drawn to the book's cover and after reading the synopsis, committed to some demanding and possibly dense content.

The book begins with a lengthy description about the original publication of the novella, its acclaim, the extensive translation process, and much of its plot. I read through everything carefully thinking it would help me to navigate the historical/philosophical/religious material more readily. In retrospect, I would have preferred to begin with the text and to read this preface material as an afterward.

The efforts invested in translation (which included the author himself) were notable and the plot of the friar's journey from Paris to Florence seeking religious/historical manuscripts was laid out as a first person account. The novella got very interesting for me toward the middle when the friar, Nicolas, started meeting with the alchemist, Pierre Dufray, and learning concepts firsthand by observing the mysterious alchemist and watching his comings and goings. The tension builds continuously during these visits and we are also introduced to a few other characters including the enigmatic child "Jean" whose character added a touch of the supernatural for me and contributed to the underlying darkness of the story.

Unfortunately, the final third or so of the novella just eluded me in what felt like metaphorical allusions to religion and also the disturbing "human tendency" toward mob mentality, violence and rage. With that the compelling feel of the story diminished for me. While very grateful for the opportunity to read this translation, the entirety didn't hold my attention through the conclusion. I am interested in reading other translated works by this author and wish him tremendous success in its release here.

Thanks to NetGalley and Columbia University Press for the ARC!

Keiichiro Hirano’s newly-translated Eclipse is a subdued exploration of the tension between synthesis and syncretism—a novella concerned with how one responds when the foundation falls out from under belief.

The story is simple—a fifteenth-century Dominican monk feels a burden to explore philosophical possibilities outside Christianity so that he might integrate them into his faith. It worked with Platonic thought, he argues, so why not alchemy? There isn’t much of a premise beyond that, but the first-person narration (translated beautifully by Brent de Chene and Charles De Wolfe) draws the reader toward interiority, even when the storyteller is witnessing some truly bizarre imagery. It’s an effective approach because it forces us to constantly wrestle with a question:

Which matters more—events or their interpretation?

Late in the book, there’s a line about the villagers being filled with “eschatological anxiety,” and that’s perhaps the easiest way to define the story as a whole. All of the disparate elements—alchemical possibility, religious hypocrisy, and un-gendered ambiguity—serve to rupture the narrative and suggest it will careen to some sort of reality-shattering destruction.

And yet it lumbers uncomfortably on.

We expect the catharsis of crisis, but the author rejects it as a form of confirmation bias—the need to retrofit new experience into old beliefs. I say “belief” here because I don’t think this is simply about faith or religion. It seems more broadly ontological.

Throughout the book, we move deep into the nature of belief. When the alchemist’s practices are similar to a monk’s, does the object of faith matter? Similarly, when a lecherous priest holds the power to condemn, what is the nature of absolution? Do these distinctions matter, or are they universally destructive?

All of these tensions come to a head when an innocent, hermaphroditic creature born from the shadows in a cave (hello, Plato?) is stoned for being a witch. Its innocence—maybe its holiness—seems rooted in its lack of humanity. Its refusal of gendered dichotomy echoes the Christological significance of the hypostatic union. More importantly, however, readers are left pondering whether its salvific function originates in its lack of language—the absence of a structure to scaffold faith. The narrative never gives us a clear answer, instead culminating in an apocalyptic explosion of burnt flesh and bodily fluid before returning to muted uneventfulness almost immediately.

In the end, the only sin is holding on to belief too tightly.

Beautiful descriptions. The writing is a work of art. I did not quite understand the story but I think it is one of the points of the book that it feels like a dream were the line between reality and fiction is thin and it adds to the allure of the novel. This book is one of the few instances where I enjoyed feeling confused.

I’m not sure how to describe this novella. There are no chapters and it’s a memoir written in the first person by a Dominican friar, mainly about their time in a little village outside Lyon visiting an alchemist. It is a work of incredible research and empathy as fifteenth-century christian theology is rather removed from Japanese buddhism/Shinto/neo-confucianism. Yet, it didn’t grab me. Nothing much happened. I struggled to follow the philosophical musings, various lists of books looked like a display of research rather than driving the plot forward and it ended up as a DNF at 50%. I wish I liked it more but it really reads as a light fictionalisation of philosophical/theological treatises rather than as a true work of fiction. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Eclipse is a short piece following Nicolas, a 15th century Dominican friar who is exploring theological issues and is interested in alchemy, so much so that he ends up travelling to a village in search of a known alchemist. The author shows us Nicolas' mind, the way he questions some ideas and doesn't consider others, how he reacts to the person and the events that he encounters, allowing the character to narrate in great detail his feelings and reflexions. Meanwhile, the village is going through some events, leading all threads to meet on a version of the historically known witch trials of the inquisition.
The prose was slow to pick up my interest in the first half but made up for it on the second part of the book. I'd say it is at its best when exploring the extasy of the friar when "exposed" to specific knowledge or experience and how he finds a way to fit it all into his frame of mind and his continued life. I'd consider reading more from the author if the chance arises.

A strange and satisfying novella. It has a style that I am not used to in Japanese fiction – the sentences are long, flowing, colourful. You will need to absorb them slowly and patiently.

Eclipse reminded me of The Name of the Rose – that is, if the latter was a fever dream. In 1482 a young Dominican priest scholar named Nicolas is traveling through France, looking for a complete manuscript of Corpus Hermeticum. Nicolas believes that his mission in life is to reconcile Christianity to “pagan” philosophy. There is a lot of such dichotomy and duality in the book - Christian vs pagan, mind vs body, sin vs God, world of flesh vs the divine, female vs male, etc. Can we meld and reconcile?

Nicolas has a habit of thinking deeply about everything he sees. There is a lot of theology and Christian philosophy that an unwary reader might drown in. (I had to quickly refresh my memory on Thomas Aquinas and Willian of Ockham.)

For no particular reason other than curiosity, Nicolas decides to stop at a remote village to visit an alchemist. His interactions with the villagers are very nicely written, and the descriptions are beautiful.

“… we passed three young women who had come flying out of the building. They were all dressed in long white gowns whose hems, flipping in the wind, were like clumps of earth kicked up by galloping horses.”

There is another Dominican there, an inquisitor who carries Bernard Gui’s Inquisitor’s Manual everywhere with him. (Hello again, The Name of the Rose.)

The geometrical layout of the village might carry a deeper meaning and there is a bridge where people have seen ghosts. Nicolas’ first meetings with Pierre the alchemist are powerful and poetic.

Then we go into a territory which is very weird, very disturbing, and impactful. Horrible things happen. There might be a hint of an explanation at the end, but this is up to the reader to determine.

Having finished, I am left with the feeling of wonder and a conviction of having been elsewhere.

This is not a book for every kind of reader. I suspect the current average GR rating reflects this. But I am glad that I have read it.

P.S. The preface summarises the plot in great detail. I realised this in time and skimmed forward in panic, as I wanted to go in blind. You’ve been warned :)

Huge thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC!

Eclipse is a unique blend of history and religion. While the writing is beautifully detailed, I found it to be overly wordy, resembling a diary rather than a streamlined story. This stylistic choice, while engaging at times, made it challenging for me to grasp the underlying meaning or direction of the plot.

The narrative follows Nicolas, a recently graduated Dominican friar, as he embarks on a journey from Paris to Florence in search of esoteric texts. Set in 1482, the novel captures a time when the world was transitioning from the medieval era to the Renaissance, providing a rich backdrop for Nicolas's intellectual pursuits.

However, despite the intriguing premise, I found myself struggling to maintain focus amidst the dense prose. The intricacies of the narrative often felt overwhelming, making it difficult to connect with the deeper themes of knowledge and belief.

Rich in both language and themes and original in setting, transporting us to late medieval, early renaissance France. Very daring for a debut and I understand how this was a prizewinning novel
Moreover, the ignorance displayed by the worldly cuts short any hope that one may have of being understood, and therein may lie a cause for the accusation of arrogance often levelled against me.

Eclipse made me think of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose and packs a lot for just 130 pages, with c. 15 pages of this edition by Columbia University Press being an introduction which kind of explains the whole novel, I don't understand why these intro's aren't put at the end of the book so that the reader can experience the book uninfluenced.

We follow Nicolas, a recently graduated Dominican friar, who travels from Paris to Florence in search of esoteric books (prime on his list is the Corpus Hermeticum, which sounds satanic enough for me) on natural philosophy. He is very wordy (I needed to look up quite a lot of words from the English translation, favourite is victuals for food, imagine someone using that in a real life conversation). The year is 1482, and the world is solidly on the brink from medieval to the renaissance, with the bishop of Lyon, who sends of Nicolas on his travels, talking about Florence as one in the late 20th century would speak about New York.
As an aside from Nicolas his travels, and forming c. 80% of the book, is a sojourn into a small village where Pierre Foray, alchemist resides.

Pierre is essential for the narrator his vision of reconciling pagan philosophy with theology, embodied in the Lapis philosophicus.
The village is still reeling from the impact of the plague, acutely visible in the graveyards. Clocks and books are rare and the religious representation consists of a drunk and a zealous member of the inquisition. In this section I enjoyed the mention of a saint from the Netherlands, Lidwina from Schiedam, and the depth of historical research into the age is also clear when blue shirt is used as an insult by inn-goers to signify that a man is apparently a cuckold. The engagement between Pierre and Nicolas is searching, halting, but when our main character enters into the large forest outside of the village things are accelerated. We enter a mystical cave with a stalagmite and roses that seem out of this world. Copulating giants in the sky appear (think of Goya his painting The Colossus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Colossus_(painting)) and a witch-hunt ensues.

The fusion between male and female, pagan and godly, flesh and spirit and sun and moon is effectuated near the end of the book in such a way that Nicolas is a changed person. Florence in all its beauty afterwards is just a small epilogue compared to the near rapture experienced.
One may well ask whether this was not all utter madness, but the impact of the events haunt him even long into old age and during the rest of his academical career.
There is guilt of not speaking up, but also allusions to the unknowability of the real structure of the world (and by extension God) and even overtures that the second coming of Christ, signified in a crown of thorns and a ouroboros being combined, has been stopped due to what transpired in the village haunt him. As a reader we can understand part of this, but without experiencing something likewise ourselves (maybe a modern day equivalent would be seeing something that can only be classified as alien) and having the same contextual frame to place events in, it is hard to feel the emotional depth.

Still this is a fascinating book from Keiichirō Hirano, a 23 year old who was still finalising his degree, I understand how this won a major prize in Japan and I give this novel 3.5 stars.

In the 15th century scholars were rediscovering the works of the ancient Greeks and Romans, scouring libraries across Europe to discover rare manuscripts. Florence was the center of this book trade.

Eclipse imagines a young Dominican friar’s quest to find the complete manuscript of the Corpus Hermeticum, Greek Gnostic writings translated into Latin a decade previous. Nicolas “had an intense interest in the pagan philosophy of antiquity.” He was concerned that these pagan ideas would challenge Christianity unless the church brought order, as Saint Thomas Aquinas “had subordained Aristotelian philosophy to the divine teachings of the Church.” There was much truth in the pagan philosophies, Nicolas affirmed, but also much error.

Nicolas leaves Paris for the mercantile center of Lyon where a complete manuscript might be found. There, Nicolas meets a bishop who has a complete manuscript, but who also refers him to a local village where an alchemist seeks to produce gold.

At the village Nicolas finds a corrupt priest who is given over to sensual pleasure, and a popular preaching priest with a devoted following. Neither represent Nicolas’ view of true faith.

“People have not understood the meaning of Christ,” he bemoans. They love the human Jesus without understanding his dual nature, God incarnated in the flesh. Nicolas affirms that “we are not licensed to abhor this world,” because God lived among us.

Nicolas visits the alchemist Pierre, observes his work and reads from his personal library. The alchemist believes that “all metallic substances are destined to achieve perfection and become gold.” He is also a cypher, a man of few words, living a regulated life of simple food and a bed of straw, but disappearing regularly into the dark woods reputed to be haunted by demons.

One day, Nicolas trails the alchemist through the woods to a narrow opening leading to a cave, and through the dark cave to a room where is found a hermaphrodite to which Pierre pays homage.

The village has been visited by a series of disasters which continue. Villagers see a huge monster of copulating figures. And then, on the bridge that separates the town, the hermaphrodite is seen and captured, tortured, and condemned to burn at the stake. At the moment of its death, a solar eclipse darkens the earth, and Nicolas experiences a transcendent moment. Years later, he wonders if he had seen the second coming of Christ.

It is a strange story in the form of a memoir, and historical fiction, and a philosophical exploration heavy with Jungian archetypes. I understood that Nicolas was on a spiritual journey into the unconscious, encountering the symbol of wholeness. The hermaphrodite wears a crown of thorns and an ouroboros, symbol of eternal death and rebirth. The sun and moon converge into one during the eclipse, the feminine moon covering the masculine sun, a symbol of the unconscious overwhelming the rational consciousness. Nicolas experienced a psychic wholeness that haunts him all of his life.

As historical fiction, the novel is marvelous, the narrative voice pulling me in right away. Readers may respond viscerally to the heavily symbolic climax without understanding the archetypal imagery, but most may just be confused. I found it fascinating and I kept thinking about it all day and when I woke at night was still pondering it.

This is the first English version of the 1998 award winning Japanese novel.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this e-ARC! I gave this 3 stars because ultimately I love translated works and seeing how much of the original language's intricacies are kept in the new text. If you are like me in that sense, I always recommend that you read it for yourself! The story, unfortunately, ended up being entirely different from what I was expecting and I just couldn't find myself caring much about what was happening.

Eclipse was an interesting read, but it didn't quite hit the mark for me. The exploration of identity, memory, and the human condition was thought-provoking.

However, I found the narrative to be a bit slow-paced and disjointed at times. The characters felt somewhat detached, and I struggled to form a strong emotional connection with them. The ending, while intriguing, left me with more questions than answers.

Overall, Eclipse is a thought-provoking novel with an intriguing premise, but it fell short of being a truly captivating experience. If you enjoy philosophical explorations of identity and memory, you might find this book interesting, but be prepared for a slow burn and an ambiguous ending.

DNF (I can't give no rating so I chose one star)

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read this.

I thought I would try something outside of my comfort zone, but this was a miss for me. It’s not that the book is bad, but that I did not care about what was happening in the story. The words didn’t stick in my brain and I never wanted to pick this up.

This book definitely has it’s audience, I’m just not part of it.

While I do not always understand philosophy in all its forms I enjoy reading books with philosophical themes and ideas. That said Eclipse was an easy read, the translation was brilliant I'm not sure I was wowed by it but glad I have read it,

A young Dominican friar sets out to Florence on a journey to gain knowledge. On his way, he stops off to try to converse with - and learn from, an oddly bland and unresponsive alchemist. The story was mildly interesting, though incredibly dull, and it felt lazy all the way through. Using the friars' cowardly tendencies and unwillingness to speak up for anyone but himself as an excuse to give the least amount of information about the goings on in the village and beyond. I'm glad it was a short book, because nothing much really happened. The few big events were strange because there wasn't enough information imparted beforehand. Though the small-minded, suspicious 15th-century village life was outlined well. I would recommend Eclipse still because it is so short and an interesting little read, but it's not extraordinary.

I really enjoyed reading Japanese fiction, still sometimes the story was a bit confusing, and I had to re- read some pages to get behind what was going on. I don't think, at least for me, that that took away from the reading vibe as I was even more invested in what was going on. The writing and setting of this book are well done and executed.

Set in the late 15th Century, this was an interesting story shared in memoir-ish style, a story of a young Dominican monk who is on a quest, but ends up wrapped up in strange events, events which seem to get stranger as time passes.

There is a flow to this story that feels a bit like a gentle river as this begins, but one that becomes more dangerous over time. A story of those who wish to destroy those people and/or things that don’t serve what they see as ‘their’ wishes.

There are many moments in this story with lovely prose, but overall as this story continued it felt as though it was moved along simply by chaos and bedlam, just for the sake of the ending, which was disappointing.


Pub Date: 12 Nov 2024


Many thanks for the ARC provided by Columbia University Press

2.5 Stars - rounded up.
In the end, this was a miss for me - I was excited to read Japanese historical fiction and the plot of a young Dominican friar who journeys from Paris to Florence in search of manuscripts of pre-Christian philosophy books seemed so unusual that I had to try it. I wonder if many things were lost in translation for me. It was beautifully written but there was just something missing. I will definitely look at the author's other translated works. Thanks to Columbia University Press and NetGalley for this ARC.

An absolutely fabulous novella set in pre-renaissance France. Written in the form of a memoir this novella is gripping, fascinating and thought provoking. The story sticks rigidly to the plot and it feels like everything unnecessary is discarded; what is left is a powerful, philosophical story that builds up to one miraculous moment. Whether this is glorious or malevolent is up to the reader to decide.

Not for me didnt like writing style or theme which is unusual because i love medieval history but this was not for me i liked the synopsis but not the cover or title.

Eclipse by Keiichirō Hirano is an upcoming short novel, coming this November. The story follows a Dominican monk on a journey from France to Florence, Italy, in search of rare manuscripts. Along the way, he stops in a small village where strange and unsettling events begin to unfold.

While the novel is beautifully written, I found myself completely lost. The narrative is often confusing, and I struggled to grasp the underlying meaning or direction of the story. Despite this, the writing style kept me engaged, even as the plot remained elusive.

Eclipse seems to be the kind of novel that might reveal more upon a second reading. Though I didn't enjoy this particular work, I’m inclined to explore more of his books that have been translated into English.