The Office of Gardens and Ponds by Didier Decoin

These most exquisite of French books are said to have taken famed French novelist Didier Decoin fourteen years to finish. That information conjures up an image in reader's mind of a man imprisoned up in a lakeside cottage in Switzerland, surrounded by shelves of books on Japanese history and culture. He spends years poring over them. He travels to Kyoto and Niigata for research purposes before returning to the cottage. He repeats this for over a decade before emerging with a 300-page book that shines gently golden, and he smiles, his eyes gleaming.

Now that Katsuro is dead, his grief-stricken widow, Miyuki, must take up the task and make the month-long journey to the capital. And if you want to know what a modern take on a Japanese folk tale, mixed with European fairy tales and a dash of Shakespeare could possibly look like, this book is, indeed, that.

Link to read: www.goodreads.com/book/show/44662731-the-office-of-gardens-and-ponds