REQUIEM by Shizuko Go, translated by...

REQUIEM by Shizuko Go, translated by Geraldine Harcourt (Kodansha: $6.95). Shizuko Go’s moving novel about a young girl’s experiences during the latter days of World War II has been called “a Japanese ‘Diary of Anne Frank.’ ” Having grown up during the invasion of China, 16-year-old Setsuko Oizumi has never known peace. She and her schoolmate Naomi Niwa comfort each other as they endure privation and American bombing raids: “The two girls, seventeen and fifteen at their next birthdays, were bereft of a future, and though their real lives had yet to begin they were talking like old folks lost in reminiscences. Or perhaps this was their old age, for the hour of their death was near, as they well knew.” Determined to face adversity with proper Japanese resolution, Setsuko leaves school to work in a factory; the daughter of a Western-educated economist who has been branded as a traitor, Naomi takes a different view of the slowly crumbling war effort. But their political differences are eclipsed by their overwhelming need for companionship as the war destroys their country and way of life. The fragmented narrative, composed of letters, memories and conversations, suggests a mosaic wrought from the shattered pieces of the heroine’s tragically brief life.