Asa Yoneda

Winner of the Tanizaki Prize in 2022, her latest short story collection from 2021, Mittens and Pity is what Yoshimoto calls the greatest achievement of her writing life since Dead-End Memories Set between Kanazawa, Helsinki, Taipei, Rome, Hong Kong, and Hachijo-jima, the six stories collected here depict people who are struggling with recent loss and coming to terms with the truth of living with the memory. In the title story, a couple takes a honeymoon to Helsinki after both mothers, who had been against their marriage, passed away. In "Sinsin and the Mouse," a daughter who has dedicated her young adult life to caring for her sick mother, travels to Taipei after her mother's death, slowly adjusting to her new freedom and loneliness. In "Caronte," seeking closure from the accidental death of her best friend, a woman follows the last footstep of her best friend in Rome and encounters the person who has been holding her friend's final message. Instead of fighting with their pain, women in Mittens and Pity observe their emotions and find a tiny sparkle in the moment. Yoshimoto has been writing about loss since her debut and this collection showcases what Yoshimoto has been trying to achieve in the last thirty years. Mittens and Pity is wise, compassionate, and hopeful. Yes, as always, food heals the human soul in this collection. Yes, this is the best Banana Yoshimoto literature.

Winner of the Akutagawa Prize and the Kenzaburo Oe PrizeA New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice"In Yukiko Motoya's delightful new story collection, the familiar becomes unfamiliar . . . Certainly the style will remind readers of the Japanese authors Banana Yoshimoto and Sayaka Murata, but the stories themselves--and the logic, or lack thereof, within their sentences--are reminiscent, at least to this reader, of Joy Williams and Rivka Galchen and George Saunders." --Weike Wang, The New York Times Book Review A housewife takes up bodybuilding and sees radical changes to her physique, which her workaholic husband fails to notice. A boy waits at a bus stop, mocking commuters struggling to keep their umbrellas open in a typhoon, until an old man shows him that they hold the secret to flying. A saleswoman in a clothing boutique waits endlessly on a customer who won't come out of the fitting room, and who may or may not be human. A newlywed notices that her spouse's features are beginning to slide around his face to match her own. In these eleven stories, the individuals who lift the curtains of their orderly homes and workplaces are confronted with the bizarre, the grotesque, the fantastic, the alien--and find a doorway to liberation. The English-language debut of one of Japan's most fearlessly inventive young writers.

"A beautiful translation... Yoshimoto deploys a magically Japanese light touch to emotionally and existentially tough subject matter: domestic disarray, loneliness, identity issues, lovesickness... a] nimble narrative." ―ELLE 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 Shimokitazawa, 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 trying-- unsuccessfully--to 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.