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Dragon Palace

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

Included in The New Yorker's Best Books of 2023

Stories from a Japanese master of transformative fiction, where reality, myth, and human foibles meet shifting dimensions of gender, biology, and destiny.

From the bestselling author of Strange Weather in Tokyo comes this otherworldly collection of eight stories, each a masterpiece of transformation, infused with humor, sex, and the universal search for love and beauty—in a world where the laws of time and space, and even species boundaries, don't apply. Meet a shape-shifting con man, a goddess who uses sex to control her followers, an elderly man possessed by a fox spirit, a woman who falls in love with her 400-year-old ancestor, a kitchen god with three faces in a weasel-infested apartment block, moles who provide underground sanctuary for humans who have lost the will to live, a man nurtured through life by his seven extraordinary sisters, and a woman who is handed from husband to husband until she is finally able to return to the sea.

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    • Booklist

      August 31, 2023
      Prominent Japanese writer Kawakami and lauded Canadian professor-translator Goossen reprise their successful collaboration for People from My Neighborhood (2021) with another addictively strange collection. In "The Roar," possibly the most disquieting of the eight stories, the only brother of seven older sisters (their names reflecting their birth order in Japanese) is imprisoned by some, nursed by one, marries another, and seemingly commits suicide with the last. Other bizarre familial relationships play out in "Dragon Palace," which is about a woman whose miniature great-grandmother, an alleged goddess, visits and shares her life story; in "Shimazaki," a 200-plus-year-old woman falls in love with her 400-year-old ancestor. The opening and closing stories feature ocean creatures drawn to land by their libidos. In "Hokusai," an octopus targets an unemployed loner for alcohol, snacks, and women. In "Sea Horse," an aquatic equine (not a seahorse) is passed around a series of (mostly abusive) husbands. In "Mole," discarded humans are regularly collected and housed underground by a more humane animal. Unsettling and provocative, Kawakami's latest stories should continue to grow her western audiences.

      COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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  • English

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