From the bestselling, International Booker-shortlisted author of Strange Weather in Tokyo, this polyphonic story of love and friendship on the outskirts of Tokyo takes readers into a neighborhood like any other, yet full of unforgettable characters—by turns funny, wise, and heartrending.

Take the train from central Tokyo and head east. In twenty minutes, hop off and here you are: far from anywhere, but right in the heart of everything. Here, you'll meet a widowed fishmonger who invites his dead wife's former lover to move in, a fortune teller who helps a friend down on his luck, a young woman who learns her mother-in-law's secret over a late night snack of tea and rice crackers, and, at the local restaurant, the cook and the server whose on/off relationship might be back on.

From one of Japan's most celebrated writers, this charming, character-rich meander through a small, seemingly average community becomes a quiet, profound meditation on connection and attachment, loneliness and loss, life and all its ephemera.
 

Hiromi Kawakami was born in Tokyo in 1958. In 2001 she won the Tanizaki Prize for Strange Weather in Tokyo, which became an international bestseller and was shortlisted for the 2013 Man Asian Literary Prize and the 2014 International Foreign Fiction Prize. Her other fiction includes The Nakano Thrift Shop, The Ten Loves of Mr. Nishino, People from My Neighborhood, The Third Love and Under the Eye of the Big Bird, which was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2025.

Allison Markin Powell has been awarded grants from English PEN and the NEA, and the 2020 PEN America Translation Prize for The Ten Loves of Mr. Nishino. Her translations include works by Osamu Dazai, Fuminori Nakamura, Shiori Ito, and Kanako Nishi. She was the guest editor for the first Japan issue of Words Without Borders and she maintains the database Japanese Literature in English at www.japaneseliteratureinenglish.com.