暗殺の年輪

not bad, but the author has written better stories since these

This is a book of five short stories from the first two years of the author's career, including his debut story 冥い海 and the title story 暗殺の年輪 which won the Naoki Prize in 1973. The themes I think of as "classic Fujisawa" are already present here -- small scale stories with characters hemmed in by circumstances, social position and their moral code, who struggle but often fail to make things work out.

The stories generally do not furigana character names, which is annoying for learners since Edo period names are generally pretty different to modern ones. Also 冥い海 is about the artist 北斎 so if you don't recognise his name you'll probably be a bit short of context in that story. I also felt the overall difficulty level was a little higher than other books by this author.

Personally I prefer the author's later work, which is less relentlessly downbeat, so if you haven't read anything by him yet I would suggest starting with https://learnnatively.com/book/522b5a8791/ for short stories (in particular if I were handing out prizes I think the title story 花のあと definitely better than any of the stories in this book), or https://learnnatively.com/book/bf18221152/ for something novel-length.