Eclipse is a unique blend of history and religion. While the writing is beautifully detailed, I found it to be overly wordy, resembling a diary rather than a streamlined story. This stylistic choice, while engaging at times, made it challenging for me to grasp the underlying meaning or direction of the plot.

The narrative follows Nicolas, a recently graduated Dominican friar, as he embarks on a journey from Paris to Florence in search of esoteric texts. Set in 1482, the novel captures a time when the world was transitioning from the medieval era to the Renaissance, providing a rich backdrop for Nicolas's intellectual pursuits.

However, despite the intriguing premise, I found myself struggling to maintain focus amidst the dense prose. The intricacies of the narrative often felt overwhelming, making it difficult to connect with the deeper themes of knowledge and belief.

Rich in both language and themes and original in setting, transporting us to late medieval, early renaissance France. Very daring for a debut and I understand how this was a prizewinning novel
Moreover, the ignorance displayed by the worldly cuts short any hope that one may have of being understood, and therein may lie a cause for the accusation of arrogance often levelled against me.

Eclipse made me think of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose and packs a lot for just 130 pages, with c. 15 pages of this edition by Columbia University Press being an introduction which kind of explains the whole novel, I don't understand why these intro's aren't put at the end of the book so that the reader can experience the book uninfluenced.

We follow Nicolas, a recently graduated Dominican friar, who travels from Paris to Florence in search of esoteric books (prime on his list is the Corpus Hermeticum, which sounds satanic enough for me) on natural philosophy. He is very wordy (I needed to look up quite a lot of words from the English translation, favourite is victuals for food, imagine someone using that in a real life conversation). The year is 1482, and the world is solidly on the brink from medieval to the renaissance, with the bishop of Lyon, who sends of Nicolas on his travels, talking about Florence as one in the late 20th century would speak about New York.
As an aside from Nicolas his travels, and forming c. 80% of the book, is a sojourn into a small village where Pierre Foray, alchemist resides.

Pierre is essential for the narrator his vision of reconciling pagan philosophy with theology, embodied in the Lapis philosophicus.
The village is still reeling from the impact of the plague, acutely visible in the graveyards. Clocks and books are rare and the religious representation consists of a drunk and a zealous member of the inquisition. In this section I enjoyed the mention of a saint from the Netherlands, Lidwina from Schiedam, and the depth of historical research into the age is also clear when blue shirt is used as an insult by inn-goers to signify that a man is apparently a cuckold. The engagement between Pierre and Nicolas is searching, halting, but when our main character enters into the large forest outside of the village things are accelerated. We enter a mystical cave with a stalagmite and roses that seem out of this world. Copulating giants in the sky appear (think of Goya his painting The Colossus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Colossus_(painting)) and a witch-hunt ensues.

The fusion between male and female, pagan and godly, flesh and spirit and sun and moon is effectuated near the end of the book in such a way that Nicolas is a changed person. Florence in all its beauty afterwards is just a small epilogue compared to the near rapture experienced.
One may well ask whether this was not all utter madness, but the impact of the events haunt him even long into old age and during the rest of his academical career.
There is guilt of not speaking up, but also allusions to the unknowability of the real structure of the world (and by extension God) and even overtures that the second coming of Christ, signified in a crown of thorns and a ouroboros being combined, has been stopped due to what transpired in the village haunt him. As a reader we can understand part of this, but without experiencing something likewise ourselves (maybe a modern day equivalent would be seeing something that can only be classified as alien) and having the same contextual frame to place events in, it is hard to feel the emotional depth.

Still this is a fascinating book from Keiichirō Hirano, a 23 year old who was still finalising his degree, I understand how this won a major prize in Japan and I give this novel 3.5 stars.

In the 15th century scholars were rediscovering the works of the ancient Greeks and Romans, scouring libraries across Europe to discover rare manuscripts. Florence was the center of this book trade.

Eclipse imagines a young Dominican friar’s quest to find the complete manuscript of the Corpus Hermeticum, Greek Gnostic writings translated into Latin a decade previous. Nicolas “had an intense interest in the pagan philosophy of antiquity.” He was concerned that these pagan ideas would challenge Christianity unless the church brought order, as Saint Thomas Aquinas “had subordained Aristotelian philosophy to the divine teachings of the Church.” There was much truth in the pagan philosophies, Nicolas affirmed, but also much error.

Nicolas leaves Paris for the mercantile center of Lyon where a complete manuscript might be found. There, Nicolas meets a bishop who has a complete manuscript, but who also refers him to a local village where an alchemist seeks to produce gold.

At the village Nicolas finds a corrupt priest who is given over to sensual pleasure, and a popular preaching priest with a devoted following. Neither represent Nicolas’ view of true faith.

“People have not understood the meaning of Christ,” he bemoans. They love the human Jesus without understanding his dual nature, God incarnated in the flesh. Nicolas affirms that “we are not licensed to abhor this world,” because God lived among us.

Nicolas visits the alchemist Pierre, observes his work and reads from his personal library. The alchemist believes that “all metallic substances are destined to achieve perfection and become gold.” He is also a cypher, a man of few words, living a regulated life of simple food and a bed of straw, but disappearing regularly into the dark woods reputed to be haunted by demons.

One day, Nicolas trails the alchemist through the woods to a narrow opening leading to a cave, and through the dark cave to a room where is found a hermaphrodite to which Pierre pays homage.

The village has been visited by a series of disasters which continue. Villagers see a huge monster of copulating figures. And then, on the bridge that separates the town, the hermaphrodite is seen and captured, tortured, and condemned to burn at the stake. At the moment of its death, a solar eclipse darkens the earth, and Nicolas experiences a transcendent moment. Years later, he wonders if he had seen the second coming of Christ.

It is a strange story in the form of a memoir, and historical fiction, and a philosophical exploration heavy with Jungian archetypes. I understood that Nicolas was on a spiritual journey into the unconscious, encountering the symbol of wholeness. The hermaphrodite wears a crown of thorns and an ouroboros, symbol of eternal death and rebirth. The sun and moon converge into one during the eclipse, the feminine moon covering the masculine sun, a symbol of the unconscious overwhelming the rational consciousness. Nicolas experienced a psychic wholeness that haunts him all of his life.

As historical fiction, the novel is marvelous, the narrative voice pulling me in right away. Readers may respond viscerally to the heavily symbolic climax without understanding the archetypal imagery, but most may just be confused. I found it fascinating and I kept thinking about it all day and when I woke at night was still pondering it.

This is the first English version of the 1998 award winning Japanese novel.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this e-ARC! I gave this 3 stars because ultimately I love translated works and seeing how much of the original language's intricacies are kept in the new text. If you are like me in that sense, I always recommend that you read it for yourself! The story, unfortunately, ended up being entirely different from what I was expecting and I just couldn't find myself caring much about what was happening.

Eclipse was an interesting read, but it didn't quite hit the mark for me. The exploration of identity, memory, and the human condition was thought-provoking.

However, I found the narrative to be a bit slow-paced and disjointed at times. The characters felt somewhat detached, and I struggled to form a strong emotional connection with them. The ending, while intriguing, left me with more questions than answers.

Overall, Eclipse is a thought-provoking novel with an intriguing premise, but it fell short of being a truly captivating experience. If you enjoy philosophical explorations of identity and memory, you might find this book interesting, but be prepared for a slow burn and an ambiguous ending.

DNF (I can't give no rating so I chose one star)

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read this.

I thought I would try something outside of my comfort zone, but this was a miss for me. It’s not that the book is bad, but that I did not care about what was happening in the story. The words didn’t stick in my brain and I never wanted to pick this up.

This book definitely has it’s audience, I’m just not part of it.

While I do not always understand philosophy in all its forms I enjoy reading books with philosophical themes and ideas. That said Eclipse was an easy read, the translation was brilliant I'm not sure I was wowed by it but glad I have read it,

A young Dominican friar sets out to Florence on a journey to gain knowledge. On his way, he stops off to try to converse with - and learn from, an oddly bland and unresponsive alchemist. The story was mildly interesting, though incredibly dull, and it felt lazy all the way through. Using the friars' cowardly tendencies and unwillingness to speak up for anyone but himself as an excuse to give the least amount of information about the goings on in the village and beyond. I'm glad it was a short book, because nothing much really happened. The few big events were strange because there wasn't enough information imparted beforehand. Though the small-minded, suspicious 15th-century village life was outlined well. I would recommend Eclipse still because it is so short and an interesting little read, but it's not extraordinary.

I really enjoyed reading Japanese fiction, still sometimes the story was a bit confusing, and I had to re- read some pages to get behind what was going on. I don't think, at least for me, that that took away from the reading vibe as I was even more invested in what was going on. The writing and setting of this book are well done and executed.

Set in the late 15th Century, this was an interesting story shared in memoir-ish style, a story of a young Dominican monk who is on a quest, but ends up wrapped up in strange events, events which seem to get stranger as time passes.

There is a flow to this story that feels a bit like a gentle river as this begins, but one that becomes more dangerous over time. A story of those who wish to destroy those people and/or things that don’t serve what they see as ‘their’ wishes.

There are many moments in this story with lovely prose, but overall as this story continued it felt as though it was moved along simply by chaos and bedlam, just for the sake of the ending, which was disappointing.


Pub Date: 12 Nov 2024


Many thanks for the ARC provided by Columbia University Press

2.5 Stars - rounded up.
In the end, this was a miss for me - I was excited to read Japanese historical fiction and the plot of a young Dominican friar who journeys from Paris to Florence in search of manuscripts of pre-Christian philosophy books seemed so unusual that I had to try it. I wonder if many things were lost in translation for me. It was beautifully written but there was just something missing. I will definitely look at the author's other translated works. Thanks to Columbia University Press and NetGalley for this ARC.

An absolutely fabulous novella set in pre-renaissance France. Written in the form of a memoir this novella is gripping, fascinating and thought provoking. The story sticks rigidly to the plot and it feels like everything unnecessary is discarded; what is left is a powerful, philosophical story that builds up to one miraculous moment. Whether this is glorious or malevolent is up to the reader to decide.

Not for me didnt like writing style or theme which is unusual because i love medieval history but this was not for me i liked the synopsis but not the cover or title.

Eclipse by Keiichirō Hirano is an upcoming short novel, coming this November. The story follows a Dominican monk on a journey from France to Florence, Italy, in search of rare manuscripts. Along the way, he stops in a small village where strange and unsettling events begin to unfold.

While the novel is beautifully written, I found myself completely lost. The narrative is often confusing, and I struggled to grasp the underlying meaning or direction of the story. Despite this, the writing style kept me engaged, even as the plot remained elusive.

Eclipse seems to be the kind of novel that might reveal more upon a second reading. Though I didn't enjoy this particular work, I’m inclined to explore more of his books that have been translated into English.

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Eclipse by Hirano Keiichiro is a first person POV literary historical Japanese novella. A young Dominican friar in the fifteenth century goes to Florence for books on pre-Christian philosophy. On the way, he meets an alchemist in a town that is having a few struggles of its own. And what he finds is both human and not.

As someone who grew up Catholic, I’m always a fan of how other people view historical (and modern) Catholic practices from as many POVs as possible. The Samurai by Endo Shusaku, a Catholic Japanese author, is one of my favorite historicals of all time for that very reason. Hirano Keiichiro goes into the complex views of Catholicism vs alchemy at the time and how faith and science can both be at odds and influence each other. The priest in town having a child after taking the cloth was something that happened quite often (the Medici family had a lot of ties to the Papacy, for instance) and even continues to this day despite the vows to abstain from physical relationships.

The novella explores a lot of dichotomies and takes a more philosophical tone rather than a plot-focused narrative. A lot of the imagery is creating a contrast that gets called back to or is part of the larger whole. Towards the end, we get a far more detailed look into the philosophy in relation to the experiments of the local alchemist.

Content warning for mentions of torture and the G slur

I would recommend this to fans of literary historical novels and readers looking for a Japanese novella set in Europe in the fifteenth century

Now what have I just read?
Eclipse is hard to describe because when put down as ‘a friar goes to Florence in the eve of Renaissance and meets an alchemist in a village’ it does it little justice.
Like The Prophet, Eclipse carries deep insights and questions.
Although well written and having an ideal length, I am unsure if it was my lack of full grasp or a bit of the prose that made this a 4 star instead of a 5 star read for me.
I will read this book again come autumn time and see if I can absorb all its teachings.

One of the strangest books I’ve read but maybe not the most enjoyable. This book was mind bending but after I finished it I was underwhelmed. I also didn’t like the writing, but this could be due to some phrases getting lost in translation I’m not sure

I enjoyed this a lot. Such a fascinating period of history and such a well told story. The exploration around religion and culture was fascinating.

Eclipse is Keiichiro Hirano's novella delving deep into mythological lore, alchemy, and history. A perfect blend of three, Hirano's prose is sharp and cuts straight to the teeth. It is the perfect book for anyone who wants to read a literary twist on a historical fiction. Short but with luscious imagery that is rich and decadent, we follow an undergraduate student as he goes out to find a missing manuscript on medieval alchemy during a scholarly quest. It is an easy and quick read, but still manages a lot to ponder about and creates a foundation to be a classic.

I don't suppose there are many people who would expect a novel about pre-Renaissance religious thought in Europe to be a particularly entertaining read but "Eclipse" is a fascinating and ,it could be said literally ,enlightening book. Equally,if you haven't read it,it is surprising that a book on this subject should be a massive seller,an award winner and considered a classic in Japan.

The somewhat spare plot involves a young Dominican scholar interested in the links between Pagan and Christian teachings as written about by Thomas Aquinas and others. On a journey to Florence in search of a pre-Christian manuscript recommended to him by his mentor he's directed to a small village along the way and told that a local Alchemist has knowledge that will help him in a different kind of journey.

That brief description doesn't even touch the sides of what an amazing book this is, I rarely read books twice but along with The Prophet it's one I'll read again and again. There's so much insight here,so much to think about and learn. I'm no scholar but author Keiichiro Hirano's skill in making some quite complex theological ideas and principles not only accessible but fascinating is the work of a master. At times I struggled as something totally new to me was related but the device of the young Dominican struggling himself with these ideas and his thought processes giving both himself and the reader an explanation for the layman is genius. This is a lot more than a novel,in a small number of pages there's philosophy,theology ,history and a wide range of spiritual and esoteric lore.

The effort made to bring this book to an English-speaking audience also deserves mention, A large team of academics were involved and impressively author Hirano was also involved in the translation making sure that the English language version of his work was as he'd want it to be.
The first time I read this book it was Google to hand to decipher some of the more archaic words and read about some of the early teachers mentioned which broke the narrative at times. I'll definitely be reading it again at least once so that's a one off issue ,and of course I learned something new along the way which is never time wasted.

Quite and amazing book that I'm confident will been seen very quickly as a classic work in the English-speaking world as well as in it's native Japan.