Book cover for Almost Nothing, Yet Everything: A Book about Water by Hiroshi Osada

Almost Nothing, Yet Everything

A Book about Water

2021 Released
44 Pages
1 Hours
Ebook Unavailable
Audiobook Unavailable
Paperback Unavailable
Hardback Unavailable
Enchanted LionISBN 9781592703579
Translated by David Boyd
Existing in myriad forms, containing multitudes in its reflection, and coursing through each and every one of us, water sustains the world around us--and life itself.

A USBBY Outstanding International Book of 2022
Selected by the
New York Post as a 2022 Book to Buy for Everyone on Your Gift List

Artist Ryōji Arai and poet Hiroshi Osada, the Japanese team behind critically acclaimed Every Color of Light, offer up another meditation on the natural world in this ode to water. A lyrical moment between parent and child in a boat on a river unfolds into an examination of the water that surrounds them, and the nature and life sustained by it: "It's only oxygen and hydrogen. Simple as could be, and yet nothing means more to life as we know it."

Arai's lush art and Osada's evocative poetry, beautifully translated from Japanese by David Boyd, work together to enchant readers and refresh their spirit, opening their eyes to the wonders of water, the universe, and life.

Hiroshi Osada

Hiroshi Osada debuted as a poet with This Journey. In 2000, his first collaboration with Ryōji Arai, A Forest Picture Book, earned the Kōdansha Publishing Culture Award for Children's Literature.

More by Hiroshi Osada

David Boyd

Translated by

David Boyd is Assistant Professor of Japanese at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is the winner of the 2017/2018 Japan–U.S. Friendship Commission (JUSFC) Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature for his translation of Hideo Furukawa’s Slow Boat (Pushkin Press, 2017). With Sam Bett, he is currently co-translating the novels of Mieko Kawakami.

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