Finger Bone

by Hiroki Takahashi & Takami Nieda (translator)

Finger Bone was the debut novel of award-winning Japanese writer Hiroki Takahashi, first published in English in 2023. The title alone conveys a lot of its horror: rather than gravestones, when Japanese soldiers died in World War II, one finger would be chopped off, stripped of its flesh and sent home to the family. The novel is set in Papua Guinea in 1942, and details the experience of a young, wounded soldier in the Imperial Japanese Army. It’s a short, very sad book.