The Bells of Old Tokyo

An elegant and absorbing tour of Tokyo, its past, and its people from “a profoundly evocative writer” ( The Wall Street Journal ). Longlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize From 1632 until 1854, Japan’s rulers restricted contact with foreign countries, a near isolation that fostered a remarkable and unique culture that endures to this day. In hypnotic prose and sensual detail, Anna Sherman describes searching for the great bells by which the inhabitants of Edo, later called