'Breathtaking' – Haruki Murakami author of Norwegian Wood
A New York Times 'Notable Book of 2020' and one of Elena Ferrante's 'Top 40 Books by Female Authors'
On a hot summer’s day in a poor suburb of Tokyo we meet three women: thirty-year-old Natsuko, her older sister Makiko, and Makiko’s teenage daughter Midoriko. Makiko, an ageing hostess despairing the loss of her looks, has travelled to Tokyo in search of breast enhancement surgery. She's accompanied by Midoriko, who has recently stopped speaking, finding herself unable to deal with her own changing body and her mother’s self-obsession. Her silence dominates Natsuko’s rundown apartment, providing a catalyst for each woman to grapple with their own anxieties and their relationships with one another.
Eight years later, we meet Natsuko again. She is now a writer and find herself on a journey back to her native city, returning to memories of that summer and her family’s past as she faces her own uncertain future.
In Breasts and Eggs Mieko Kawakami paints a radical and intimate portrait of contemporary working class womanhood in Japan, recounting the heartbreaking journeys of three women in a society where the odds are stacked against them. This is an unforgettable English language debut from a major new international talent.
'Bold, modern and surprising' – An Yu, author of Braised Pork
'Incredible and propulsive' – Naoise Dolan, author of Exciting Times
Shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation.
Translated from the Japanese by Sam Bett and David Boyd.
Review
I can never forget the sense of pure astonishment I felt when I first read Mieko Kawakami’s novella Breasts and Eggs . . . breathtaking . . . Mieko Kawakami is always ceaselessly growing and evolving -- Haruki Murakami
Incredible -- Yoko Ogawa, author of The Memory Police
Breasts and Eggs, which caused a small sensation upon its publication in the UK and US last year, was a fierce yet thoughtful tale of working-class womanhood - New Statesman
Bold, modern, and surprising -- An Yu, author of Braised Pork
It is Tokyo as it is lived in, not a film set - New York Times
If you like Sheila Heti, you'll love Mieko Kawakami - NPR
A dazzling intellectual thriller by a new Japanese literary star . . . stunning - Financial Times
Breasts and Eggs is stunning - its rage, wry humour and nihilism rendered with real care. It's compelling too, and yet nearly every page gave me reason to pause, realising that some tiny stitch in the fabric of everyday life as a woman had been unceremoniously unpicked -- Olivia Sudjic, author of Sympathy
Incredible and propulsive -- Naoise Dolan
Fierce and sweet and I would like the rest of Kawakami’s work translated, please -- Sarah Moss, author of Summerwater, in The Times
Mieko Kawakami is a writer of rare candour and brilliance -- Rónán Hession, author of Leonard and Hungry Paul
Already a literary sensation . . . Kawakami writes with unsettling precision about the body - its discomforts, its appetites, its smells and secretions. And she is especially good at capturing its longings, those in this novel being at once obsessive and inchoate, and in one way or another about transformation . . . she regularly drops phrases that made me giddy with pleasure. -- Katie Kitamura - New York Times
An original and deeply moving novel-that is by turns hilarious, sexy, devastating, and always unforgettable. Breasts and Eggs crackles with provocative insights into the passage of time, friendship, money, and the pleasures and pains of living in a body. I found myself pausing regularly to marvel at Mieko Kawakami’s gift for seeking out the caverns hidden deep within her characters and shining a light there. This book is a gift -- Laura van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel
One of Japan’s brightest stars is set to explode across the global skies of literature . . . Kawakami is both a writer’s writer and an entertainer, a thinker and constantly evolving stylist who manages to be highly readable and immensely popular. - Japan Times
Mieko Kawakami lobbed a literary grenade into the fusty, male-dominated world of Japanese fiction with 'Chichi to Ran'('Breasts and Eggs') - Economist
Kawakami is emerging as one of Japan’s most prominent young literary voices, with thoughtfulness and eccentricity at the heart of her prose - Culture Trip
So finely crafted, every few lines could be a haiku, and you almost forget how difficult it must have been to create something so perfectly simple. And when you notice the clarity, meditativeness, eccentricity, quirk and wit in her writing, you immediately understand how Murakami could be inspired by a writer like this -- Praise for Ms Ice Cream Sandwich - Ladies Finger
The novel details the lives of three women: the 30-year-old unmarried narrator, her older sister Makiko, who’s obsessed with getting breast implants and her daughter, Midoriko. With humour and compassion, Kawakami explores female oppression in Japan, reproduction rights and motherhood - Now Magazine
Originally published in Mieko Kawakami’s native Japanese, the author’s stellar 2008 novel Breast and Eggs is being translated to English for the first time ever this month, opening her bold writing up to a wider audience - Dazed and Confused
About the Author
Mieko Kawakami is the author of the internationally best-selling novel Breasts and Eggs, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and one of TIME’s Best 10 Books of 2020, and the highly-acclaimed Heaven, her second novel to be translated and published in English, which Oprah Daily described as written “with jagged, visceral beauty.” Born in Osaka, Japan, Kawakami made her literary debut as a poet in 2006, and in 2007 published her first novella, My Ego, My Teeth, and the World. Known for their poetic qualities, their insights into the female body, and their preoccupation with ethics and modern society, her books have been translated into over twenty languages. Kawakami’s literary awards include the Akutagawa Prize, the Tanizaki Prize, and the Murasaki Shikibu Prize. She lives in Tokyo, Japan.
Sam Bett studied Japanese at UMass-Amherst and Kwansei Gakuin University. Awarded the Grand Prize in the 2016 JLPP International Translation Competition, he has translated fiction by Yoko Ogawa, Yukio Mishima, and Nisio Isin. He is currently co-translating with David Boyd the novels of Mieko Kawakami.
David Boyd is Assistant Professor of Japanese at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is the winner of the 2017/2018 Japan–U.S. Friendship Commission (JUSFC) Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature for his translation of Hideo Furukawa’s Slow Boat (Pushkin Press, 2017). With Sam Bett, he is currently co-translating the novels of Mieko Kawakami.
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