For a factual, equally moving take, on the aftermath of the tsunami, we can recommend Strong in the Rain: Surviving Japan's Earthquake, Tsunami, and Fukushima Nuclear Disaster by Lucy Birmingham and David McNeill The feeling of being connected provides those people with support to find the strength and power to move forward. It is a place where each person can tend to their pain and heal their wounds. In the month following the tsunami, she had lived on a six-and-a-half-by-ten-foot sheet of canvas in an elementary-school gymnasium with 120 other people. And yet she would never again feel as lonely as she had in that place. Bonnier Books UK has announced a novel inspired by the true story of Japan's2011 tsunami for its new literary imprint, Manilla Press. In parts, it is also a reflection on religion. What it is and what it is for, and what we do instead of it if we have no such beliefs. Maybe it takes an atheist to need a disconnected telephone, where the Buddhist would simply stand in front of the family butsudan and do exactly the same thing. Or an animist/pantheist or whatever else it is I might be to go sit on a beach and speak to the waves.

Then, one day she hears about a man who has an old disused telephone booth in his garden. There, those who have lost loved ones find the strength to speak to them and begin to come to terms with their grief. As news of the phone booth spreads, people travel to it from miles around. Die Telefonzelle am Ende der Welt“, geschrieben von Laura Imai Messina ist eine Geschichte, die mich vollends berührt hat. Die Autorin greift hier eine wirklich tiefe Thematik, die der Trauer, des Neuanfangs, des Loslassens und einfach des Lebens, mit all seinem Licht und Schatten auf und verknüpft das ganze eben mit wahren Ereignissen und eben der Telefonzelle, am Ende der Welt... die es wirklich gibt und ein ganz besonderer Ort für viele Menschen ist, die ihren Toten geliebten Menschen gedenken, die noch nicht loslassen können und diese Telefonzelle als wichtigen Ort nutzen, um Abschied zu nehmen. Aber eben auch um neue Kraft zu schöpfen. Und so tauchte ich in diese Geschichte ein, tief bewegt, tief berührt und mit unzähligen Tränen in den Augen und doch dem Gefühl der Zuversicht, der Geborgenheit und der Hoffnung und Liebe im Herzen. Yui is intrigued and makes the drive from Tokyo. Along the way, she meets Takeshi, who lost his wife, and whose young daughter, Hana, is mute following her mother’s death, and together they find Bell Gardia, the garden “on a hill in the middle of nowhere” with the wind phone. A poignant, atmospheric novel dealing with love, coming to terms with loss and the restoration of one's self' - Daily Mail marzo 2011: al largo della costa della regione di Tōhoku, nel Giappone settentrionale, ci fu Il sisma, con epicentro in mare e con successivo tsunami, più potente mai misurato in Giappone e il quarto a livello mondiale.Longer chapters are punctuated by shorter ones, some written as lists (“Ten things plus one that Hana and Akiko loved doing together”), others as fragments, a single word, or an in-depth look and what had otherwise seemed like a secondary observation. These ultimately add to the experience: revealing a relationship through quieter moments, serving as a break in the tension or offering a different lens to reflect upon the previous chapter. Spare and poetic, this beautiful book is both a small, quiet love story and a vast expansive meditation on grieving and loss' - Heat Written in Italian and published as Quel che affidiamo al vento, the English translation was done by Lucy Rand. Rand’s translation is fluent and seamless; she captures the lyricism and meditative quality of the writing with care, a feat made more impressive given that there’s also a distinct Japanese sensibility (the author has been living in Japan for the past 15 years). A story about the dogged survival of hope when all else is lost . . . A striking haiku of the human heart' - The Times

The Phone Box At The Edge Of The World is a moving story about grief, compassion, human connection and love. The Phone Box At The Edge Of The World: My Opinion When I speak of my indifference, what I mean is that I think it’s a powerful story with many interesting explorations of grief, the meaning of family, and belonging, but I don’t think it was quite grounded enough for me. The beautiful writing coupled with the split narrative (which switched between Yui’s story and various other digressions such as lists relating to her daughter or quotes from the bible) meant that the whole thing was a bit messy for me, and didn’t include enough solid plot to keep me interested. Inspired by a real telephone box located in the north-east of Japan comes The Phone Box at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina, a novel about Yui, a woman who lost her mother and daughter in the 2011 tsunami and is forced to navigate her grief as well as the life that lies ahead. Writing about these immediately after the tragedy felt wrong, like taking advantage. I waited, looking for the right story to tell,” she said. “I wanted to write about mourning, but also the relief and joy of survival, the feeling that we have to entrust parts of ourselves to the people we love and the courage we need to let those closest to us go. I wanted the story I told to be full of lightness and love ... I believe this story is for those who want to witness the transformation from before to after, for those who do not want their lives brought to a halt by the terrible things that happen to us, but want to keep opening themselves up to life’s opportunities.” This isn't a love story as such, it's a story about what love is – about how we express it, the nature of it, and in particular the kinds of love beyond the romantic kind. Love for a child, for a parent, for a friend. Love for strangers. For life. It is, obviously, also a story about grief, about mourning, but ultimately every love story is about grief. The problem with happy ever after is that 'ever after' has a tendency to be quite short. It is the nature of life that we will lose the ones we love – or that they will lose us – and the beauty of life lies at least in part with how we deal with that loss.The Phone Box at the End of the World, which has already sold foreign language rights into 17 territories, is about the pilgrimage of a bereaved Japanese woman to a telephone box for the dead in the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami. It was inspired by a real phone box for the dead, that exists at the bottom of a garden in a small town in Northern Japan, Otsuchi, to which people travel from miles around to call those they have lost. Yui lost her mother and daughter in the tsunami, and in the days following the catastrophe, she lived in a shelter with other survivors. Her existence was confined to a mat, and she was joined in her grief by a man who carried around an empty picture frame, observing the world through its void. As Yui begins to live again while trying to heal from her pain, she hears of the disconnected telephone that carries people’s words to the dead.

When Yui loses her mother and daughter in the tsunami, she is plunged into despair and wonders how she will ever carry on. One day she hears of the phone box, and decides to make her own pilgrimage there, to speak once more to the people she loved the most. But when you have lost everything, the right words can be the hardest thing to find . . . I enjoyed the details added at the end of each chapter to give extra depth to the topic. Some of the addendums were lighthearted whereas others were really sombre and sad. Laura Imai Messina’s novel is a beautifully written story that flows through ravaged loss, desolation, resilience, hope, and the promise of a future with love and peace. The Phone Box at the End of the World is a book that gently enriches the soul and beats with a loving serenity. This is a beautiful novel with a message of hope. It is about two people who are confined to the silence of grief - Yui who lost her mother and daughter in the March 2011 Tsunami, and Takeshi who lost his wife to cancer and whose young daughter no longer speaks.

myself becoming the person I was before, my wife listening to me from the kitchen, busy preparing breakfast or dinner, me grumbling that the coffee burned my tongue. When Yui loses both her mother and her daughter in the tsunami, she begins to mark the passage of time from that date onward: Everything is relative to March 11, 2011, the day the tsunami tore Japan apart, and when grief took hold of her life. Yui struggles to continue on, alone with her pain. To end on a positive note, there were a few things I did appreciate about The Phone Box At The Edge Of The World. I felt I had a deeper understanding of how the tsunami effected the people of Japan in the short or long term on a practical and emotional level. I also enjoyed immersing myself in the Japanese culture as Messina imparted the knowledge she has gained from living in Japan with her husband in an easy manner.

Das Leben zerrte an einem Menschen, mit der Zeit entstanden unzählige Risse und Brüche, doch vielleicht waren es ja genau sie, die die Geschichte eines Menschen formten und ihn anspornten, herauszufinden, was als Nächstes geschehen würde.<