Tác Giả mieko kawakami

Breasts and Eggs

A beguiling novel about three women struggling to determine their own lives in contemporary Tokyo.

A New York Times 'Notable Book of the Year' and one of Elena Ferrante's 'Top 40 Books by Female Authors'. Shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation.

On a hot summer’s day in a poor suburb of Tokyo we meet three women: thirty-year-old Natsuko, her older sister Makiko, and Makiko’s teenage daughter Midoriko. Makiko, an ageing hostess despairing the loss of her looks, has travelled to Tokyo in search of breast enhancement surgery. She's accompanied by her daughter, who has recently stopped speaking, finding herself unable to deal with her own changing body and her mother’s self-obsession. Her silence dominates Natsuko’s rundown apartment, providing a catalyst for each woman to grapple with their own anxieties and their relationships with one another.

Eight years later, we meet Natsuko again. She is now a writer and finds herself on a journey back to her native city, returning to memories of that summer and her family’s past as she faces her own uncertain future.

In Breasts and Eggs Mieko Kawakami paints a radical and intimate portrait of contemporary working class womanhood in Japan, recounting the heartbreaking journeys of three women in a society where the odds are stacked against them.

Translated from the Japanese by Sam Bett and David Boyd.

'Bold, modern and surprising' – An Yu, author of Braised Pork

'Incredible and propulsive' – Naoise Dolan, author of Exciting Times

'Breathtaking' – Haruki Murakami author of Norwegian Wood

All The Lovers In The Night

From literary sensation and International Booker Prize-shortlisted author Mieko Kawakami, the bestelling author of Breasts and Eggs and Heaven comes All the Lovers in the Night, an extraordinary, deeply moving and insightful story set in contemporary Tokyo.

'A brief, compelling study of alienation and friendship; I binge-read it in one sitting.' - Rebecca F Kuang, author of Babel

Fuyuko Irie is a freelance proofreader in her thirties. Living alone in an overwhelming city and unable to form meaningful relationships, she has little contact with anyone other than her colleague, Hijiri. But a chance encounter with a man named Mitsutsuka awakens something new in her. Through their weekly meetings, Fuyuko starts to see the world in a different light and still, painful memories from her past begin to resurface.

As Fuyuko realizes she exists in a small world of her own making she begins to push at her own boundaries. But will she find the strength to bring down the walls that surround her?

Poetic, modern and shocking, this is an unforgettable novel from Japan’s most exciting writer.

‘Mieko Kawakami is a genius’ - Naoise Dolan, author of Exciting Times

All the Lovers in the Night is translated from the Japanese by Sam Bett and David Boyd.

The plot

The novel follows Fuyuko Irie, a freelance proofreader in her mid-thirties who lives alone, over the course of about eight months. She starts by describing a life defined by careful routine, devotion to work, and solitude.

As she begins to develop friendships with a complicated colleague and a gentle, unusual man, Irie's stable veneer cracks. The story follows Irie's stream of consciousness from the present to memories and dreams. While her character is defined by her difficulty speaking to others and sense of embarrassment, her narration is as if she is speaking to herself: unflinchingly sensuous and intimate, unconcerned with making herself appear attractive.

The months in the novel chronicle her dissociation, coming to terms with a secret rape, drinking, and an attempt to understand what others can and cannot see in a person.