Hiromi Kawakami

Strange Weather in Tokyo

A Novel

AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN ASIAN LITERARY PRIZE

“Simply and earnestly told, this is a profound exploration of human connection and the ways love can be found in surprising new places.” —BuzzFeed

Tsukiko, thirty–eight, works in an office and lives alone. One night, she happens to meet one of her former high school teachers, "Sensei," in a local bar. Tsukiko had only ever called him "Sensei" ("Teacher"). He is thirty years her senior, retired, and presumably a widower. Their relationship develops from a perfunctory acknowledgment of each other as they eat and drink alone at the bar, to a hesitant intimacy which tilts awkwardly and poignantly into love.

As Tsukiko and Sensei grow to know and love one another, time's passing is marked by author Hiromi Kawakami's gentle hints at the changing seasons: from warm sake to chilled beer, from the buds on the trees to the blooming of the cherry blossoms. A moving, funny, and immersive tale of modern Japan and old–fashioned romance, Strange Weather in Tokyo is a masterwork by one of Japan's most beloved writers working today.

Manazuru

A Novel

Startlingly restless and immaculately compact, Manazuru paints the portrait of a woman on the brink of her own memories and future.

Twelve years have passed since Kei’s husband, Rei, disappeared and she was left alone with her three–year–old daughter. Her new relationship with a married man—the antithesis of Rei—has brought her life to a numbing stasis, and her relationships with her mother and daughter have spilled into routine, day after day. Kei begins making repeated trips to the seaside town of Manazuru, a place that jogs her memory to a moment in time she can never quite locate. Her time there by the water encompasses years of unsteady footing and a developing urgency to find something.

Through a poetic style embracing the surreal and grotesque, a quiet tenderness emerges from these dark moments. Manazuru is a meditation on memory—a profound, precisely delineated exploration of the relationships between lovers and family members.