Banana Yoshimoto

Alan Ayckbourn

Relates the experiences of two free-spirited young women in contemporary Japan.

Kitchen

Banana Yoshimoto has a magical ability to animate the lives of her young characters, and here she spins the stories of three women, all bewitched into a spiritual sleep. One, mourning a lost lover, finds herself sleepwalking at night. Another, who has embarked on a relationship with a man whose wife is in a coma, finds herself suddenly unable to stay awake. A third finds her sleep haunted by another woman whom she was once pitted against in a love triangle. Sly and mystical as a ghost story, with a touch of Kafkaesque surrealism, Asleep is an enchanting book from one of the best writers in contemporary international fiction.

Asleep

Goodbye Tsugumi

Japan’s internationally celebrated master storyteller returns with five stories of women on their way to healing that vividly portrays the blissful moments and everyday sorrows that surround us in everyday life First published in Japan in 2003 and never-before-published in the United States, Dead-End Memories collects the stories of five women who, following sudden and painful events, quietly discover their ways back to recovery. Among the women we meet in Dead-End Memories is a woman betrayed by her fiancé who finds a perfect refuge in an apartment above her uncle’s bar while seeking the real meaning of happiness. In “House of Ghosts,” a daughter of a yōshoku restaurant owner encounters the ghosts of a sweet elderly couple who haven’t yet realized that they have been dead for years. In “Tomo-chan’s Happiness,” an office worker who is a victim of sexual assault finally catches sight of the hope of romance. Yoshimoto’s gentle, effortless prose reminds us that one true miracle can be as simple as having someone to share a meal with and that happiness is always within us if only we take a moment to pause and reflect. Discover this collection of what Yoshimoto herself calls the “most precious work of my writing career.”

Stories

Dead-End Memories

The internationally beloved author of Kitchen and Dead-End Memories returns with a beautiful and heartfelt story of a young woman haunted by her childhood and the inescapable bitterness that inevitably comes from knowing the truth Yayoi, a nineteen-year-old woman from a seemingly loving middle-class family, has lately been haunted by the feeling that she has forgotten something important from her childhood. Her premonition grows stronger day by day and, as if led by it, she decides to move in with her mysterious aunt, Yukino. No one understands her aunt’s unusual lifestyle. For as long as Yayoi can remember, Yukino has lived alone in an old gloomy single-family home, quietly, almost as though asleep. When she is not working, Yukino spends all day in her pajamas, clipping her nails and trimming her split ends. She eats only when she feels like it, and she often falls asleep lying on her side in the hallway. She sometimes wakes Yayoi at two in the morning to be her drinking companion, sometimes serves flan in a huge mixing bowl for dinner, and watches Friday the 13th over and over to comfort herself. A study desk, old stuffed animals––things Yukino wants to forget––are piled up in her backyard like a graveyard of her memories. An instant bestseller in Japan when first published in 1988, The Premonition is finally available for the first time in English, translated by the celebrated Asa Yoneda.

A Novel

The Premonition

These six stories explore the themes of time, healing and fate, and how urban, sophisticated and independent young men and women come to terms with them.

Lizard

The Lake

The author of Lizard, Amrita, Asleep and Goodbye Tsugumi offers two novellas, one about a young woman's dream about an ex-lover while on a hiking trip, and the other about the sister of a woman lying in a coma. Reprint.

& Hard Luck

Hardboiled

A celebrated actress who has died in mysterious and shocking circumstances leaves behind an unconventional extended family that includes an older sister, a woman in her twenties through whose eyes the story unfolds; a young brother who possesses mystical powers; and a fiancé who is writing a novel with uncanny parallels to his own story.'Her novels can have the effect of addictive drugs . . . Pathos, nostalgia, the sense of exquisite sadness at the fleetingness of life are key elements of beauty in Japanese aesthetics, and all are themes central to Yoshimoto's books.' The Times

Amrita

Moshi moshi

C'è un giorno, un giorno soltanto, in cui in condizioni particolari è possibile rivedere i propri cari defunti. Dicono che qualcuno è pure in grado di sentirli e parlar loro. Che sia possibile per Satsuki, che non riesce in alcun modo a scordare il ragazzo perduto, e Hiiragi, che per ricordare Yumiko ne indossa tutti i giorni la divisa alla marinara? La misteriosa Urara, che intuisce i numeri di telefono delle persone al primo sguardo, ne sembra convinta.

Moonlight shadow

A pair of thematically linked novellas from the acclaimed author of Lizard, Amrita, and Goodbye Tsugumi. In cherished novels such as Kitchen and Goodbye Tsugumi, Banana Yoshimoto’s warm, witty, and heartfelt depictions of the lives of young Japanese have earned her international acclaim and bestseller status. Her insightful, spare vision returns in two novellas possessed by the ghosts of love found and lost. In Hardboiled, the unnamed narrator is hiking in the mountains on an anniversary she has forgotten about, the anniversary of her ex-lover’s death. As she nears her hotel—stopping on the way at a hillside shrine and a strange soba shop—a sense of haunting falls over her. Perhaps these eerie events will help her make peace with her loss. Hard Luck is about another young woman, whose sister is dying and lies in a coma. Kuni’s fiancé left her after the accident, but his brother Sakai continues to visit, and the two of them gradually grow closer as they make peace with the impending loss of their loved one. Yoshimoto’s voice is clear, assured, and deeply moving, displaying again why she is one of Japan’s, and the world’s, most beloved writers. “A sparkling book.” —The Washington Post

Hardboiled & Hard Luck

A powerful story of passion and friendship, the nature of love and the taboos surrounding it. N.P. is the last collection of stories by a celebrated Japanese writer, written in English while she was living in Boston.

N.P.

Having grown up by the sea with her invalid cousin Tsugumi, Maria moves to Tokyo and encounters university life and impending adulthood, and spending a last summer with her cousin, she comes to a new understanding about home and family.

In "Moshi-Moshi," Yoshie s much-loved musician father has died in a suicide pact with an unknown woman. It is only when Yoshie and her mother move to Shimo-kitazawa, a traditional Tokyo neighborhood of narrow streets, quirky shops, and friendly residents that they can finally start to put their painful past behind them. However, despite their attempts to move forward, Yoshie is haunted by nightmares in which her father is looking for the phone he left behind on the day he died, or on which she is tryingunsuccessfullyto call him. Is her dead father trying to communicate a message to her through these dreams? With the lightness of touch and surreal detachment that are the hallmarks of her writing, Banana Yoshimoto turns a potential tragedy into a poignant coming-of-age ghost story and a life-affirming homage to the healing powers of community, food, and family. Published in 2010 in Japanese in Tokyo, it has sold over 29,000 copies there so far. In "Moshi-Moshi," Banana s narrator addresses the poignant question, how do you rebuild your life when your much-loved father loses his life in shocking circumstances? "

Banana Yoshimoto

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