A subtle and intimate accounting of a daughter’s final days with her mother, set amid the rush of Tokyo’s red-light district.
Drawing on her own experiences as a hostess and adult film actor, Gifted—Suzumi Suzuki’s first novel to be translated into English—offers a nuanced, frank, and intimate portrayal of the lives of a mother and daughter getting by (or not) in an industry rarely depicted authentically in literary fiction.
In the last days of her mother’s life, a young woman living in Tokyo’s red-light district is thrust into a split existence. By day, she negotiates her new role as caregiver of an abusive parent. By night, she drifts home from the hospital, goes out with other sex-workers, thinks about quitting smoking, and numbly remembers Eri, a friend who died the summer before. Her sensitivity to the details of her surroundings grounds an otherwise unstable world, one where each interaction requires a subtle negotiation of economic and sexual power, and proximity rarely means intimacy or connection. Gifted was nominated for the 167th Akutagawa Prize in 2022.
Praise for Gifted:
"In this unsentimental novella, a young woman working as a bar hostess and sex worker in Tokyo reckons with several unresolved personal traumas . . . Based on Suzuki’s own experiences in the adult industry, the book chronicles the young woman’s wanderings from bar to bar, hospital to home, with brutal honesty."—The New Yorker
“Demonstrates that death is the only way forward. Oozes with maternal cruelty.”—Yōko Ogawa, author of The Memory Police
“There is a vigilance in her sentences. The author takes responsibility for every word.” —Shuichi Yoshida, author of Parade
"Gifted explores beauty, and the body itself, as a troubling inheritance, a complicated gift that, at least for women, belongs to you but is never fully in your control."—Rebecca Hussey, Words Without Borders
"A unique and propulsive story reminiscent of the emotional elusiveness of Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman. . . With a style both clinical and aloof, the novella unfolds a heartbreaking story about the distance and closeness between mother and daughter."—Asian Review of Books
“A gleaming pocket knife of a novel stabbing into the heart of maternal abuse, inherited trauma, and the cyclical nature of sex work. With stylistic confidence and an unforgiving gaze, Suzumi Suzuki slashes through ideas of forgiveness and growth while razing a path forward only possible through demise. —Mathuson Anthony, Book Club Bar (New York City, NY)
“Explores a fascinating Japanese subculture missing from the many translated novels we’ve seen recently from Japanese authors. That the novel and protagonist are based on the author’s own life gives Gifted an added layer of interest.”—Grace Sullivan, Fountain Bookstore (Richmond, VA)
"Gifted lyrically captures a moment in time, unwrapping the bittersweet denouement in a fraught relationship between a mother and daughter."—Kris Kosaka, Japan Times
About the Author
Suzumi Suzuki is a Japanese writer. Since the release of her first book, a sociological study of actresses working in pornographic films, she has published works of both nonfiction and fiction. Suzuki's autobiographical book If You Sell Your Body, Then Goodbye! was adapted into a 2017 Eiji Uchida film. Her novel Gifted was nominated for the 167th Akutagawa Prize, and her novel Graceless was nominated for the 168th Akutagawa Prize.
Allison Markin Powell is a literary translator, editor, and publishing consultant. She received the 2020 PEN America Translation Prize for The Ten Loves of Nishino by Hiromi Kawakami. Her other translations and co-translations include works by Osamu Dazai, Kanako Nishi, and Ryunosuke Akutagawa. As co-organizer and co-host of the Translating the Future conference, she helped to draft the Manifesto on Literary Translation. She is a founding member of the translator collectives Cedilla & Co. and Strong Women, Soft Power, and maintains the database Japanese Literature in English.
