L’été de la sorcière

By&

Pages: 166
Published: 1994
Language: French

Mai is sent to her grandmother's secluded home in the Japanese countryside to recover from anxiety. Her grandmother, a wise woman with a touch of the mystical, teaches Mai about the healing power of plants and the importance of listening to one's inner voice. Amidst the beauty of nature, Mai learns to navigate her difficult emotions and find solace in the simple miracles of life.

Prose complexity: 7/10

Reflective Hopeful Emotional Atmospheric

Mentor Figure Coming of Age

Fantasy Magical Realism Contemporary Literature Literary Fiction

Kaho Nashiki

Kaho Nashiki (梨木香歩), born 1959 in Kagoshima, Japan, is a Japanese novelist and essayist. She graduated from Doshisha University's Faculty of Theology and studied children's literature in England before beginning her writing career in 1994. Her novel Nishi no Majo ga Shinda — published in French as L'été de la sorcière — won several Japanese literary prizes, including the Japan Children's Literature Association New Writer Award and the Shogakukan Literary Prize, and was adapted into a 2008 fi...

MaiProtagonist

A withdrawn junior-high girl of mixed British-Japanese heritage who stops attending school and spends a formative month at her grandmother's rural home.

Mai's grandmotherSupporting

An English-born widow living in the Japanese countryside, whom Mai and her mother call "the Witch of the West"; she teaches Mai that becoming a witch means learning to decide everything for herself.

Mai's motherSupporting

Also of mixed heritage, she works and manages the household while worrying over her daughter's refusal to attend school.

Mai's fatherSupporting

Working away in another city on a temporary assignment, he later proposes that the family relocate and live together again.

Genji-sanSupporting

A brusque neighbor whose clash with Mai over a favorite spot near the grandmother's house turns out to conceal real kindness underneath.

All characters in L’été de la sorcière