The Akutagawa Prize-winning stories from one of the most highly regarded and provocative contemporary Japanese writers
'The nightingale sang again. The plates on the table gleamed, and the food, in all its ceaseless variety, breathed, glossy and bright. The night had only just begun.'
In these three haunting and lyrical stories, three young women experience unsettling loss and romance.
In a dreamlike adventure, one woman travels through an apparently unending night with a porcelain girlfriend, mist-monsters and villainous monkeys; a sister mourns her invisible brother whom only she can still see, while the rest of her family welcome his would-be wife into their home; and an accident with a snake leads a shop girl to discover the snake-families everyone else seems to be concealing.
Sensual, yearning, and filled with the tricks of memory and grief, Record of a Night Too Brief is an atmospheric trio of unforgettable tales.
Hiromi Kawakami was born in Tokyo in 1958. Since the publication of God in 1994, she has written numerous novels and collections of short stories, including Strange Weather in Tokyo and The Nakano Thrift Shop. Her most recent novel, Running Water, was published in Japan in 2014 and won the Yomiuri Prize for Literature. Hiromi Kawakami has previously been awarded the Akutagawa Prize and the Tanizaki Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2013 Man Asian Literary Prize and the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Her work has been published in more than twenty languages.
"A supersurreal triad of stories . . . Kawakami marks the literary map of Japan with a warning that beyond here lie dragons--or snakes and ghosts, at any rate. Astonishing, strange, and wonderful. "
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Fans of Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto will enjoy immersing themselves in Kawakami's magical worlds."
--Booklist
". . . the author successfully juxtaposes elements of contemporary Japan--in Kawakami's case, postmodern Japan, with its high-rise apartment buildings, highway service areas, radio stock market reports, and advertising jingles blaring from parade-float loudspeakers -- with myths and folklore that gesture toward a lost, pre-modern imaginary."
--Los Angeles Review of Books
"Talking animals, transformations into trees and horses, and a melancholic mood of loss and love make it easy to see why Kawakami is one of the more exciting voices in contemporary Japanese literature."
--Thrillist
"A truly fantastical story . . . rewards with rich imagery that will challenge anyone's powers of imagination."
--Japan Society Journal (UK)
"At once funny and humane . . . the author's estranging fiction is bewitching. If Japan were in need of a Lewis Carroll, look no further."
--South China Morning Post
"Baffling, unsettling and haunting, these stories have a dreamlike atmosphere."
--The Lady (UK Magazine)
