Record of a Night Too Brief - (Japanese Novellas) by Hiromi Kawakami (Paperback)

About the Book

Record of a brief night was first published as Hebi o Fumu in 1996.

Book Synopsis

"Evocative... Astonishing, strange, and wonderful" - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

A trio of surreal, dazzlingly imaginative short stories set in contemporary Japan that explore desire and loss, talking animals, and odd disappearances

Sensual, yearning, and filled with the tricks of memory and grief, from the celebrated author of Strange Weather in Tokyo

In these 3 haunting and lyrical stories, young women experience loss, loneliness, and extraordinary romance.

The nightingale sang again. The plates on the table gleamed, and the food, in all its ceaseless variety, breathed, glossy and bright. The night had only just begun.

A woman travels through an unending night with a porcelain girlfriend, monsters of the mist and a monkey who shows no mercy. A sister mourns her brother, who is visible only to her, while her family welcome his would-be wife into their home. One morning, a woman treads on a snake in the park. She comes home that evening and realises the snake has moved into her house and is saying she is her mother...

Winner of the Akutagawa Prize, Japan's most prestigious literary award, the 3 stories in this collection:

• Record of a Night Too Brief
• Missing
• A Snake Stepped On

reveal a highly surreal, meticulously crafted exploration of the many facets of desire, loss and fantasy.

Part of Pushkin's Japanese Novella series: stylishly designed editions of the best of contemporary Japanese fiction, featuring celebrated, prize-winning authors including Mieko Kawakami, Hideo Furukawa, Kaori Fujino and Natsuko Imamura.

Review Quotes

"A supersurreal triad of stories . . . Kawakami marks the literary map of Japan with a warning that beyond here lie dragons--or snakes and ghosts, at any rate. Astonishing, strange, and wonderful. "
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Fans of Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto will enjoy immersing themselves in Kawakami's magical worlds."
--Booklist

". . . the author successfully juxtaposes elements of contemporary Japan--in Kawakami's case, postmodern Japan, with its high-rise apartment buildings, highway service areas, radio stock market reports, and advertising jingles blaring from parade-float loudspeakers -- with myths and folklore that gesture toward a lost, pre-modern imaginary."
--Los Angeles Review of Books

"Talking animals, transformations into trees and horses, and a melancholic mood of loss and love make it easy to see why Kawakami is one of the more exciting voices in contemporary Japanese literature."
--Thrillist

"A truly fantastical story . . . rewards with rich imagery that will challenge anyone's powers of imagination."
--Japan Society Journal (UK)

"At once funny and humane . . . the author's estranging fiction is bewitching. If Japan were in need of a Lewis Carroll, look no further."
--South China Morning Post

"Baffling, unsettling and haunting, these stories have a dreamlike atmosphere."
--The Lady (UK Magazine)

About the Author

Hiromi Kawakami was born in Tokyo in 1958. Since the publication of God in 1994, she has written numerous novels and collections of short stories, including Strange Weather in Tokyo and The Nakano Thrift Shop. Her most recent novel, Running Water, was published in Japan in 2014 and won the Yomiuri Prize for Literature. Hiromi Kawakami has previously been awarded the Akutagawa Prize and the Tanizaki Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2013 Man Asian Literary Prize and the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Her work has been published in more than twenty languages.

Lucy North is a British translator of Japanese fiction and non-fiction. She has translated Taeko Kono, Hiromi Kawakami, Fumiko Enchi, and Hiroko Oyamada, among others.