"This painful and very beautiful book gives two powerful messages--of drastic warning, yet also of affirmation of life." -- John Hersey "The most successful book yet written about the greatest single horror inflicted by one group of men upon another." --Sunday Times "Immensely effective.... This is a book which must be read." --Books and Bookmen "I would recommend Black Rain to every reader, even the squeamish." --Spectator "Its subtle ironies and noble, unsentimental pity are a reminder of the strengths of Japanese fiction." --New Statesman

Black Rain is centered around the story of a young woman who was caught in the radioactive black rain' that fell after the bombing of Hiroshima. lbuse bases his tale on real-life diaries and interviews with victims of the holocaust; the result is a book that is free from sentimentality yet manages to reveal the magnitude of the human suffering caused by the atom bomb. The life of Yasuko, on whom the black rain fell, is changed forever by periodic bouts of radiation sickness and the suspicion that her future children, too, may be affected. lbuse tempers the horror of'