The End of the Moment We Had - (Japanese Novellas) by Toshiki Okada (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Two brilliant, multi-layered longform stories about the yearning for connection in early 21st centruy Tokyo, from a prize-winning Japanese writer

"Nothing short of superb... This book gives me hope for the future of Japanese literature" -- Kenzaburo Oe, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

"Compact, ruthless, governed by a persuasive sense of dread... captures the ennui that has paralyzed a generation" -- The New York Times Book Review

In 2 stunning tales by novelist-playwright Toshiki Okada, characters stagger and thrash, bound by a generational hunger for human connection.

On the eve of the Iraq War, a man and a woman meet in a nightclub in Tokyo. They go to a love hotel, and spend the next five days in a torrid affair. Written in a stream of consciousness, with the reader's perceptions shifting and melting into one another as these two characters find unexpected deliverance in their fleeting joys.

A woman living in a damp flat obsesses on the filthy state of her home. Though she remains in bed, her inner life spirals further and further into her memories and anxieties as she longs for something more from her husband, even as she knows that she already has enough.

Mixing snapshots of moments high and low, these stories show us young people adrift in a world without security, desiring things they can't quite name. Acutely insightful and beautifully written, The End of the Moment We Had introduces an unsettlingy honest voice in Japanese fiction.

Review Quotes

"Hyperrealistic. . . Okada captures the ennui that has paralyzed a generation." -- New York Times Book Review

"So richly layered and strangely beguiling that we are left craving more. . . Samuel Malissa's translation has fizz and verve, and each slangy meditation or exchange rings true. . . The stories are at their best -- and their most baffling -- when Okada topples our expectations and proceeds by way of surprise steps and wrong turns." -- Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Nothing short of superb... This book gives me hope for the future of Japanese literature... there is power in the flow of this writer's prose." - Kenzaburo Oe, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

About the Author

Toshiki Okada is an acclaimed playwright, director and novelist. Born in Yokohama in 1973, he formed the theatre company "chelfitsch" in 1997. Since then he has written and directed all of the company's productions, practising a distinctive methodology for creating plays, and has come to be known for his use of hyper-colloquial Japanese and unique choreography. His play Five Days in March, on which the first story in The End of the Moment We Had is based, won the prestigious Kishida Drama Award. His works have been translated into many languages around the world.

Sam Malissa holds a PhD in Japanese Literature from Yale University. He has translated fiction by Toshiki Okada, Shun Medoruma, and Hideo Furukawa, among others.