Published in 2018
224 pages
Yukiko Motoya (本谷 有希子) is a seasoned Japanese author, playwright, voice actress and theatre director. She has won prestigious awards in most of those fields including the Kenzaburo Oe Prize, Mishima Yukio Prize, and the Akutagawa Prize.
What is this book about?
A housewife takes up bodybuilding and sees radical changes to her physique—which her workaholic husband fails to notice. A boy waits at a bus stop, mocking businessmen struggling to keep their umbrellas open in a typhoon—until an old man shows him that they hold the secret to flying. A woman working in a clothing boutique waits endlessly on a customer who won’t come out of the fitting room—and who may or may not be human. A newlywed notices that her husband’s features are beginning to slide around his face—to match her own.
In these eleven stories, the individuals who lift the curtains of their orderly homes and workplaces are confronted with the bizarre, the grotesque, the fantastic, the alien—and, through it, find a way to liberation. The English-language debut of one of Japan’s most fearlessly inventive young writers.
