Water Lily

Susanna Jones, Water Lily, 2003 Click on back cover to enlarge Yosha Bunko scans
Japanese translation Susanna Jones Water Lily Dust jacket, obi, and flaps of 2003 translation by Ao Masako Below Author's foreword Click on images to enlarge Yosha Bunko scans

Susanna Jones 2003

Water Lily

English editions

Susanna Jones
Water Lily
London: Picador/Pan Macmillan, 2003 (hardcover)
London: Picador, 2003 (paper cover)
Sydney: Picador, 2003 (paper cover)
294 pages
New York: Mysterious Press, 2003

Japanese translation

スザンナ ジョーンズ (著)
阿尾正子 (翻訳)
睡蓮が散るとき
東京：早川書房
ハヤカワ・ノヴェルズ
2003年11月20日 初版印刷
2003年11月30日 初版発行
240ページ、単行本

Suzanna Joonzu (Susanna Jones) (author)
Ao Masako (translator)
Suiren ga chiru toki
[ When water lilies scatter (break up) ]
Tokyo: Hayakawa Shobō
Hayakawa Novels
20 November 2003 1st edition printed
30 November 2003 1st edition published
240 pages, hardcover, jacket, obi

European translations

Som en näckros
[ Like a water lily ]
Sweden: Wahl, 2004

Le piège du nénuphar
[ The trap of the water lily ]
France: Robert Laffont, 2004 (hardcover)
France: Pocket, 2005 (paper cover)

This is Susanna Jones's second novel, which came out two years after her very successful debut, The Earthquake Bird (2001), which see for review.

Translator Ao Masako (阿尾正子 b1962), who had also translated The Earthquake Bird, dubbed the title Water Lily into Suiren ga chiru toki. "Suiren" (睡蓮) is the generic term for any variety of the genus Nymphaea, the Greek/Latin inspiration for nénuphar and näckros in titles of the French and Swedish translations. "Chiru" (散る) alludes to the breaking up or shattering of something, in this case the falling off and scattering of the flowering petals of the water lily when it has pollenated and the seed-bearing fruit begin to grow below the surface of the water.

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The story

Runa, a young Japanese high school teacher, has an affair with one of her students, and flees to Shanghai on her sister's passport. Ralph, a British man running from his own troubled past, boards the same ferry, his mind set on not returning to England alone.

To be continued.

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Susanna Jones

Susanna Jones went on to write to more more novels after The Earthquake Bird (2001) and Water Lily (2003) -- The Missing Persons Guide to Love (2007) and When Nights Were Cold: A literary mystery (2012).

The Earthquake Bird, also published by Picador in both hardback and paper cover editions, features Lucy Fly, a British woman who has been in Japan for 10 years and works as a translator, her Japanese lover Teiji, and her best Lily Bridges, who also becomes involved with Teiji. One day, Lily goes missing, a body found in Tokyo Bay is taken to be hers, and Lucy becomes an object of police investigation. See The Earthquake Bird for a review.

Susanna Jones was a university fiction tutor from 2003 to 2018. In 2019, she began teaching and tutoring creative writing in classes and workshops, and mentoring privately, in Brighton, where she lives, and on-line. She promotes her on-line offerings at PebbleBeachWriting, and on X (Twitter) and other social media.