The Book of Tokyo collects 10 stories by some of Japan’s most exciting contemporary short story writers. Together, the stories form a kind of literary map of the city’s ever-changing districts through its fiction. With works of literary fiction, crime, science fiction, and horror, the anthology provides an imaginative tour of the city for short story fans and travelers alike.
A shape-shifter arrives at Tokyo harbour in human form, set to embark on an unstoppable rampage through the city s train network...
A young woman is accompanied home one night by a reclusive student, and finds herself lured into a flat full of eerie Egyptian artefacts...
A man suspects his young wife s obsession with picnicking every weekend in the city s parks hides a darker motive...
At first, Tokyo appears in these stories as it does to many outsiders: a city of bewildering scale, awe-inspiring modernity, peculiar rules, unknowable secrets and, to some extent, danger. Characters observe their fellow citizens from afar, hesitant to stray from their daily routines to engage with them. But Tokyo being the city it is, random encounters inevitably take place a naïve book collector, mistaken for a French speaker, is drawn into a world he never knew existed; a woman seeking psychiatric help finds herself in a taxi with an older man wanting to share his own peculiar revelations; a depressed divorcee accepts an unexpected lunch invitation to try Thai food for the very first time... The result in each story is a small but crucial change in perspective, a sampling of the unexpected yet simple pleasure of other people s company. As one character puts it, The world is full of delicious things, you know.
Authors and stories included in this collection:
'Model T Frankenstein' by Hideo Furukawa
‘Picnic’ by Kaori Ekuni
‘A House for Two’ by Mitsuyo Kakuta
‘Mummy’ by Banana Yoshimoto
‘The Owl’s Estate’ by Toshiyuki Horie
‘Dad, I Love You’ by Nao-Cola Yamazaki
‘Mambo’ by Hitomi Kanehara
'Vortex' by Osamu Hashimoto
‘The Hut on the Roof’ by Hiromi Kawakami
‘An Elevator on Sunday’ by Shūichi Yoshida
'The characters habit of introspection gives these tales a hazy, dreamlike quality; the physical environment of Tokyo is rarely described directly. What gives them their sense of place is, rather, their shared sense of the ephemeral aspect to life in the big city and the various pleasures and sadnesses it brings.' --The Independent
'By using many translators, including new and emerging practitioners, The Book of Tokyo captures the variety of styles in the original, and, more importantly, the atmosphere of the city itself: its multitudes, its tragedies, its contradictions and its absurdities.' --The New Welsh Review
'An enigmatic, yet elegant work of art.' --The Singapore Review of Books
