{"product_id":"2026100012657-secondhand-lou-lan-and-other-stories","title":"Lou-Lan And Other Stories","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: No dust jacket\u003cbr\u003ePages: Yellowed\u003cbr\u003eCondition remarks: Condition as shown in image\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the vast, sun-scorched deserts of Central Asia, a vanished city holds the secrets of an entire civilisation — and Lou-lan and Other Stories by Yasushi Inoue is a haunting meditation on the passage of time, the fragility of human ambition, and the silence that swallows great empires whole. The collection's title story chronicles the doomed kingdom of Lou-lan, a once-thriving oasis city on the ancient Silk Road, whose fate is sealed by shifting sands and geopolitical forces beyond its people's control, while the accompanying stories draw on equally remote and evocative corners of history and landscape, from the steppes of inner Asia to the rugged frontiers of Japan's own past.\n\nInoue, one of twentieth-century Japan's most celebrated prose stylists, writes with a restrained, elegiac precision that transforms historical fact into profoundly human drama. His narratives resist sentimentality, instead presenting fate as something vast and indifferent — an elemental force against which individual lives flicker briefly before being reclaimed by the earth. Translated with quiet fidelity to the original Japanese, this collection stands as an essential testament to Inoue's mastery of the short form, and leaves the reader with one lingering, uneasy question: what other forgotten kingdoms lie buried just beneath the sand?\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50948326490331,"sku":"2026100012657-SECONDHAND","price":15.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/338def57-558a-45ef-9977-2ae76deb6ca4.png?v=1793104752","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026100012657-secondhand-lou-lan-and-other-stories","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}