A Mountain to the North, A Lake to the South, Paths to the West, A River to the East by Laszlo Krasznahorkai: book review

A Mountain to the North, A Lake to the South, Paths to the West, A River to the East by Laszlo Krasznahorkai (2002, English translation 2023) is set in a monastery in Kyoto, Japan, outside time and space.

The grandson of Prince Genji is a man of extrordinary beauty. He is a manifestation of everything beautiful in the world – sympathy, compassion, tact, humility, and human sensitivity.

The grandson of Prince Genji wanders the grounds of a monastery with hardly a trace of any human. He is not looking for a human – he is looking for a garden. The walk is labryinth-like with its short streets, but at the same time, it is rather chaotic.

He has trouble finding the garden. This is despite a meticulous description of the site – the gates, the courtyard, a pagoda with a bell tower, stone steps, and covered walkways. He sees the mountain looming close by, and the lake and river. He follows the paths to the west.

It is silent, except for the flitter of a bird. He ‘clearly had no idea where he was going.’ The world’s simplest garden is hidden. It is unobtainable.

A Mountain to the North is so beautifully and gently written that it is like a meditative meandering around an imaginative garden, visually descriptive and sensually emotive.

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MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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