The Snow Kimono
On sale
9th April 2015
Price: £9.99
On the same day that a retired French police inspector receives a letter from a woman claiming to be his daughter, he returns to his apartment to find a stranger waiting for him on his doorstep. That stranger is a Japanese man called Tadashi Omura, and the men end up telling each other their life stories, transporting us back to Japan and Algeria. As we try and work out the connection between the two men, one thing that’s clear is that they’ve both led lives that have been extraordinary, dangerous and built on layers upon layers of lies.
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Reviews
A novel of exquisite beauty, which evades categorisation
A striking piece of work, with all the intricate, precise beauty of an origami bird
Gripping... each chapter builds on the one before, unfolding through levels of story to unpack deeper and deeper truths
Wonderful...a novel of detection, a thriller of the intellect
Stunning and hypnotic... You won't read another novel like THE SNOW KIMONO this year, or perhaps for many to come
This book casts a spell from the start....A highly original book full of small sensations with the bonus of being a joy to read
Strongly atmospheric, the vivid scenery of Japan resonates through Henshaw's carefully placed words as he creates a psychological thriller
The novel questions authorship and the slipperiness of memory...[Its] narrative twists are challengingly clever
The writing is beautiful: pellucid and wonderfully visual, painting memorable landscape cameos. The reader is compliant, willingly engaged with a story that starts in medias res and branches in unexpected and seemingly unconnected yet complementary directions
Masterful...a tale almost as seamless, and of such a rich fabric, as one of Sachiko's mother's famous kimonos
Henshaw creates a world of psychological complexity and emotional subtlety in a story that moves from Paris to Japan and back again...Henshaw's prose shimmers as his narrative becomes ever more nuanced, complex, and misleading
Henshaw's prose [is] luminous and crisp, like the snowy countryside of Japan or the barren lanes of Algiers...When I finished The Snow Kimono, I raised my head, vaguely surprised that I was at home, in familiar surrounds, and it was still daylight outside. I turned straight back to page one and began again