I am a literary giant in Japan

Chapter 200: The Unforgettable Paradise Lost

Neither of them could understand French, but Kitagawa Hide was slightly better than Saito Reina and knew phrases such as "bonjour (hello)" and "Je t'aime (I love you)".

But I guess in the eyes of the French, his bonjour sounds similar to the foreigner next door saying "mud howl".

The subway sped along, and the French natives and Japanese office workers coming and going were no different. In the early morning, they were either rushing to take the subway to work or sending their children to school.

What surprised the two was that at least one-third of the passengers getting on at every stop were holding newspapers and books. The popularity of reading habits seemed even more exaggerated than in Japan!

No wonder French literature is known as the birthplace of Western literature. France is also the country that has won the most Nobel Prizes in Literature, a total of fifteen times!
Given this social situation of universal reading, coupled with the expansion of the parallel world literature industry, it is hard for French literature not to be strong.

Among these passengers who were reading diligently with books in their hands, one or two out of every twenty were reading "Paradise Lost" written by Hide Kitagawa.

A ratio of twenty to one is not high, but combined with the extremely high number of readers in France, it is terrifying!

Before coming here, Kitagawa Hide and his friend were thinking about whether they could use the shortlist for the Prix Goncourt to give Paradise Lost a little publicity in France.

Now it seems that it doesn’t matter much whether to advertise or not.

"Kitagawa, I feel that Paradise Lost may be able to sell 10 copies in France." Saito Rena was very excited and her voice became much louder.

Previously, the most popular Japanese literary work overseas was "Devil's Tattoo", which sold 10 copies in the United States in the year of its release, and about 5 copies in France.

If Paradise Lost can really sell 10 copies in France, Kitagawa Hideya will have broken a small record in the history of Japanese literature and deserves to be recorded in history.

Hearing this number, Kitagawa Hide was at a loss whether to laugh or cry.

As expected, without the great Murakami and his colleagues, Japanese literature would not even be considered a small part of the world literary scene. Perhaps in the eyes of Europeans and Americans, it is just "rural literature."

A few passengers who were reading nearby heard them talking and suddenly put down their books and looked over curiously.

Kitagawa Hide and the other person are rare Asian faces, and these days, most people who like to travel to Paris are from Japan and South Korea.

Unsure where the two were from, they asked in English: "Janpan? Korea?"

"Janpan~" Saito Reina immediately replied with a smile in Japanese English that is difficult to describe.

When the passengers heard that they were from Japan, they immediately became excited. Several of them excitedly picked up the book "Paradise Lost" in their hands and chattered about something.

This left Saito Reina, whose English was not very good to begin with, completely confused, and she could only feel the excitement and joy in their words.

It seems that Hide Kitagawa's books are more popular than they imagined!

In this way, the two of them used their broken English, and the passengers used English and French, along with sign language which was also incomprehensible, and they managed to communicate across servers for several minutes.

After a long time, the two got off the subway as prompted, and were waved goodbye by a group of French people before leaving.

The novel experience made Saito Rena very excited. She quietly replaced the goal of "10 copies" with "15 copies" in her mind, but she appeared calm on the surface. She took Kitagawa Hide to find the French translator hired by the company, and then went into the hotel to rest together.

This French translator graduated from Sophia University, which excels in training diplomats. She then went to the University of Paris for graduate and doctoral studies, and has been working here for a long time.

The translator was also a long-time fan of Kitagawa Hide’s books. She first asked for their autographs and a photo, then enthusiastically introduced the Goncourt Prize and the schedule of tomorrow’s award ceremony to them.

The Prix Goncourt was established in 1903 and is awarded annually to novels published in France that year. It is a prestigious literary award in France.

It is regarded as one of the three most prestigious awards in the world of literature, along with the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Booker Prize, and is comparable to the Oscars in the film and television industry.

The most outrageous thing about the Goncourt Prize is that the founders of the award, the Goncourt brothers, established the Académie Goncourt in Paris in 1902, and then specially hired ten of the most famous French writers of the time, including Flaubert, Zola, and Daudet, to form a fixed jury of ten academy members.

In order to ensure the fairness of the selection process, the Académie Goncourt will give the ten judges an annual pension of 6000 francs and a fixed residence to ensure their quality of life.

With the changing times and inflation, the annual salary that the Académie Goncourt pays to judges has now reached 5 francs (equivalent to 500 million yen today), and their fixed residences have become luxury villas in the suburbs of Paris.

As long as you are a member of the Académie Goncourt, you can continue to enjoy these benefits.

This also indirectly contributes to the fairness of the selection of the Goncourt Prize, allowing high-quality winning works to continue to emerge, making the award and French literature increasingly prosperous.

Today, the ten members of the Académie Goncourt have a higher status in the French literary world than the members of the French Academy!

"The ten academicians will hold a closed voting and selection meeting this afternoon at the Drouon Restaurant on Gaillon Street in the 1nd arrondissement of Paris. Tomorrow at pm, Mr. Kitagawa and Mr. Saito, you can go to the Drouon Restaurant to attend the award ceremony."

The translator girl enthusiastically talked about the preparations needed for the award ceremony.

For example, men are required to wear formal suits and women are required to wear dresses. Male writers can also find a female companion to attend the dinner and dance party held afterwards.

The French love romance, so they inherently pursue an extreme sense of ritual in all things. Such an award ceremony has many rules and regulations, and it would probably take several pages to list them all out.

While listening, Saito Reina took out a small notebook and wrote it down.

Even a new-age woman like her still has a certain admiration for Western culture and a sense of inferiority towards her own country in her bones.

She felt that her every word and action in France represented Japan and she could not bring shame to the people and the country.

Kitagawa Hide had no such idea. He was a person who was not very patriotic towards his country, and he was not patriotic towards Japan.

It is not easy to live two lives.

He just wanted to take care of himself, take good care of his lovely wife at home, live happily together for the rest of their lives, and then have a bunch of kids to play with.

If there is still energy left, Kitagawa Hide will consider taking care of his friends who are in this period of their lives.

This was his limit.

He doesn't care what others think.

Just live your life happily.

After a brief chat about the Goncourt Prize, the translator girl sat in Kitagawa Hide's room for a while. When she mentioned the French translation of Paradise Lost, she immediately said excitedly that the book was now selling well in major bookstores in Paris and was quite famous.

Half an hour later, the translator girl left his room hand in hand with Rena Saito. The two planned to go shopping in the afternoon and to see the most famous Eiffel Tower in the evening.

Kitagawa Hide was not interested in any of these things. He just stayed in his room and continued writing the script for "Ultraman Tiga" in his sketchbook.

He hasn't had any good inspiration recently, and there are no mobile phones or computers to play with here. French books are like incomprehensible books to him, so he just writes TV drama scripts to keep his writing skills.

Kitagawa Hide believes that it is okay not to write a book, but you must insist on writing something every day to maintain your writing feel and thinking enthusiasm, otherwise your hands and brain will become dull, and it will take a long time of rehabilitation to get them back.

The gain outweighs the loss!
As he was writing, he saw some exquisite little cards on the desk. They were not the kind with sexy beauties and mysterious numbers printed on them, but something more like postcards.

"Why not just send some postcards to Yumeko!"

Kitagawa Hide didn't know how long they would stay in Paris. What if he couldn't go back for ten days or half a month? He would miss his lovely wife at home.

International calls are extremely expensive these days. If he has to pay to make a call, his young wife will be the first one to feel distressed.

Better to send a postcard.

It saves money and is romantic, girls also like this little romance!
Just like that, Kitagawa Hide picked up a few small cards and started writing.

Unexpectedly, within a day or two, his longing for his young wife would become like a torrent of water. He felt like he had endless words to say. He filled one sheet with words, then wrote another, but it still felt like it wasn't enough.
Thinking back to the time when Jabami Rei took his little wife to the school festival, I was also very tormented during those days.

Is this the bitterness of love?
The ten academicians of the Goncourt Academy didn’t know whether love was bitter or not, but after watching "Paradise Lost", they felt really bitter!
In order to ensure that no excellent works are missed during the selection process, the ten academicians read all the French novels on the market early on, and in the past few days they quickly reviewed the ten shortlisted books again.

Pierre Combesco is the youngest of the ten jurors, at the age of 1991. He is the winner of the Goncourt Prize for his work "Les Demoiselles de Calvaire".

He is good at using love stories to expose the current social situation, which is highly consistent with the theme of "Paradise Lost".

But Hide Kitagawa's "Paradise Lost" gave him an unprecedented experience, especially the extramarital affair as the entry point, and then combined with Japan's unique sense of "mono no aware literature", it gives people a sense of beauty that is so sad that it is difficult to describe.

Combesco had read some Japanese literature before, but to be honest, it was difficult to understand and not very well written.

He didn't know if it was a problem with the translation or the work, but the Nobel Prize-nominated "The Devil's Tattoo" was also quite boring. It was just a short story about the love, hate and vengeance of an ancient Japanese prostitute, without much to highlight.

But this Paradise Lost is different.

It starts with the unethical love between a frustrated middle-aged male editor and a dignified and virtuous female calligraphy teacher, who choose to abandon everything in pursuit of the most passionate love.

However, at the end of the story, the love they expected did not come, and their lives were destroyed under countless pressures.

Some of the extremely delicate brushstrokes brought Combesco to tears.

For example, in the plot, the heroine finally discovered that her ex-husband had a new life, and she felt that everything suddenly collapsed.

At that moment, she realized that she didn't love the male protagonist as much as she thought.

At that moment, the view of love that she held on to in her heart collapsed.

So she could only choose to use death to prove that her love had not changed.

Similarly, after the male protagonist met his wife and daughter, all his regrets suddenly came to his mind when his daughter said, "Don't go."

But he had no way out.

The death of the two people was more of a self-deception than a death for love.

"Combesco, what do you think?" an old man came up to him and asked.

Of the ten works shortlisted this year, only "Paradise Lost" is from abroad, and the other nine are excellent French works.

However, the book that the academicians discussed most and could not let go of the most was "Paradise Lost".

(End of this chapter)