Eclipse (Akutagawa Prize Winner)

Winner, 2025-2026 Lindsley and Masao Miyoshi Translation Prize, Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia University

In the late fifteenth century, a young Dominican friar sets out on a journey from Paris to Florence in search of manuscripts of pre-Christian philosophy. Along the way, he encounters an ascetic alchemist in a small village. As the young man falls under the spell of the alchemist’s quest for enlightenment, a series of disasters—culminating in a total solar eclipse—str...