Negative Space - by Kaori Fujino (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A surreal and unsettling Japanese feminist body horror novella about 2 sisters who cannot escape their pasts, from the award-winning author of Nails and Eyes.

Emi is a university student living a quiet, private life, largely withdrawn from the world. But her peaceful life is disrupted when her estranged younger sister shows up at her university flat.

Her sibling quickly establishes herself while Emi moves to the cramped loft upstairs, where she can keep an eye on the other girl's movements. Her sister never used to be so strange. She refuses even to acknowledge Emi, and the pair cohabit in stony silence. As the unspoken hostility between them festers, Emi's old skin condition returns, much worse than before, as big flakes of her skin harden and fall off. As she watches her sister slip straight into a regular life--Emi's regular life--Emi finds herself struggling to hold onto her sister before she disappears entirely.

From the celebrated Japanese horror author of Nail and Eyes, this mind-bendingly surreal novella offers brooding atmosphere and cloying tension that builds to a shockingly skin-crawling twist. Known for rewriting genre expectations from a feminist slant, Kaori Fujino delivers an unnerving tale of body horror and characters who are not as they seem, perfect for fans of Samanta Schweblin and Bora Chung.

This edition also includes a bonus story "Sacrifice", which was nominated for the 141st Akutagawa Prize: a creepy, darkly humorous tale about a middle-aged woman battling twin demons.

About the Author

Kaori Fujino, a lifelong resident of Kyoto, is best known for fiction that reimagines tropes from horror, science fiction, Hollywood thrillers, urban legends and fairy tales. She holds an MA in aesthetics and art from Doshisha University. In 2013, Fujino was awarded the Akutagawa Prize, Japan's most prominent literary prize, for Nails and Eyes. In the fall of 2017, she was in residence at the University of Iowa's prestigious International Writing Program. Her stories have appeared in English translation in Granta, Monkey and the US-Japan Women's Journal.

Kendall Heitzman is a translator and associate professor of Japanese at the University of Iowa. His translation of Nails and Eyes (also published by Pushkin Press) was awarded the Japan-United States Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature.