Search results for ""Author Sayaka Murata""

From the author of international bestseller Convenience Store Woman comes a collection of short fiction: weird, out of this world and like nothing you've read before. An engaged couple falls out over the husband's dislike of clothes and objects made from human materials; a young girl finds herself deeply enamoured with the curtain in her childhood bedroom; people honour their dead by eating them and then procreating. Published in English for the first time, this exclusive edition also includes the story that first brought Sayaka Murata international acclaim: 'A Clean Marriage', which tells the story of a happily asexual couple who must submit to some radical medical procedures if they are to conceive a longed-for child. Mixing taboo-breaking body horror with feminist revenge fables, old ladies who love each other and young women finding empathy and transformation in unlikely places, Life Ceremony is a wild ride to the outer edges of one of the most original minds in contemporary fiction.

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An immeasurably influential female voice in post-war Japanese literature, Kono writes with a strange and disorienting beauty: her tales are marked by disquieting scenes, her characters all teetering on the brink of self-destruction. In the famous title story, the protagonist loathes young girls but compulsively buys expensive clothes for little boys so that she can watch them dress and undress. Taeko Kono's detached gaze at these events is transfixing: What are we hunting for? And why? Kono rarely gives the reader straightforward answers, rather reflecting, subverting and examining their expectations, both of what women are capable of, and of the narrative form itself.

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'Exhilaratingly weird and funny... Unsettling and totally unpredictable - my copy is now heavily underlined' Sally Rooney THE UNEXPECTED INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER Meet Keiko. She's 36 years old, has never had a boyfriend, and she's been working in the same supermarket for eighteen years. Keiko's family wishes she'd get a proper job. Her friends wonder why she won't get married. But Keiko knows what makes her happy, and she's not going to let anyone come between her and her convenience store... A cult hit around the world, Convenience Store Woman is both a feminist rallying cry and a must-read oddball comedy. 'A gem of a book. Quirky, deadpan, poignant and quietly profound' Ruth Ozeki 'Darkly comic' Observer '[A] short, deadpan gem... A true original' Daily Mail 'What a weird and wonderful and deeply satisfying book this is. Sayaka Murata is an utterly unique and revolutionary voice. I tore through it with great delight' Jami Attenberg

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A darkly wild novel from the multi-million-copy bestselling author of Convenience Store Woman How far would you go just to be yourself? As a child, Natsuki believed she was an alien, a different species to her earthling family and classmates. She hoped a spaceship would come down and take her home. Now, she lives quietly in an asexual marriage, pretending to be normal. But the buried horrors of Natsuki's past are pursuing her. As she flees the suburbs for the Nagano mountains and a reunion with her beloved cousin Yuu, she wonders, what will it take to escape the earthlings? 'Intimate, deadpan, and unflinchingly unhinged' Wired

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From Renoir to Monet to Gauguin – French Impressionism was not only appreciated by Western collectors at the beginning of the 20th century – it also found an early following in Japan. In 2022, on the occasion of its 100th anniversary, the Museum Folkwang will show its outstanding post-impressionist collection founded by Karl Ernst Osthaus (1874–1921). The museum collection will be supplemented by Impressionist highlights from the Kojiro Matsukata Collection (1865–1950), which laid the foundation for the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo. This is the first time this collection will be presented comprehensively outside Japan since the 1950s. The catalog features a unique compilation of about 120 works and introduces two important collectors. Transnational collection history is combined with modern masterpieces. Featuring paintings, drawings and sculptures by Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Auguste Rodin, among others, as well as a new installation by Tabaimo and Chiharu Shiota and a selection of East Asian works from the former holdings of Matsukata and Osthaus. Accompanied by a short story by Japanese bestselling author Sayaka Murata.

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