The Lantern of Lost Memories By Sanaka Hiiragi

Imagine waking up in a cosy photo studio in the mountains, between this world and the next. A kind man hands you a hot drink and a stack of photographs, one from every day of your life. There are hundreds, even thousands of them. They capture your best days and your worst, memories you treasure and those you try to forget. And then there are the rest, those in-between days that we didn’t know were leading to the great highs and lows. Then you are asked to pick one photograph from each year to be placed in a beautiful Japanese lantern, to be set spinning so that your life will flash before your eyes before you move on. This is the task set for each guest who arrives in Hirasaka’s photo studio. Like our most thumbed over photos, our favourite memories can be tarnished in time too, so he guides them back in time to relive one special day over again, to take a fresh photo and find peace. The Lantern of Lost Memories is a healing, uplifting Japanese novel about family, love, loss and humanity, and what life is really about.