Grass for His Pillow (Tales of the Otori Series #2) » (Reprint)

Lian Hearn was born in England and later settled in Australia, has a lifelong interest in Japan, has lived there, and speaks Japanese.

In Book I of the Otori trilogy, Across the Nightingale Floor, Lian Hearn created a wholly original, fully-realized fantasy world where great powers clashed and young love dawned against a dazzling and mystical landscape. Nightingale was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, one of Book magazine's best novels of the year, and one of School Library Journal's Best Adult Books for High School Readers.

In this second tale, we return to the story of Takeo-the young orphan taken up by the Otori Lord and now a closely held member of the Tribe-and his beloved Shirakawa Kaede, heir to the Maruyama, who must find a way to unify the domain she has inherited. In a complex social hierarchy, amid dissembling clans and fractured alliances, there is no place for passionate love...

© 2003 Lian Hearn Published by arrangement with Riverhead Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

The New York Times

Lian Hearn's Grass for his Pillow is a welcome sequel to the deliciously readable Across the Nightingale Floor of last year. In this new volume, which is subtitled ''Tales of the Otori: Book 2,'' we find ourselves again transported to a medieval Japan of the imagination: a harsh land ruled by local warlords, an essentially static social order in which family ties bind tightly, a culture that mixes great refinement with unspeakable brutality. — Gerald Jonas