"*The Instant Sunday Times Bestseller*
'With Sisters in Yellow, [Kawakami] proves she is still the most exciting Japanese novelist at work today' The Times
'Relentlessly riveting . . . My heart felt very tender reading this. Astonishing Kawakami, as always' Frances Cha, author of If I had Your Face
A heart-stopping story of teenage girls on the brink in 1990s Tokyo from the International Booker Prize-Shortlisted author of Heaven and Breasts and Eggs
Hana has nothing but she's hopeful. She's fifteen years old. She lives in a tiny apartment in a suburb of Tokyo with her young mother, a hostess at a local dive bar. They have no money, no security. Then Kimiko appears.
Kimiko is older, a bright light in Hana's dark world. Together they set up Lemon, a bar that, despite its shabby setting and seedy clientele, becomes a haven for Hana. Suddenly Hana has a job she loves, friends to share her days with, and the glittering promise of money. She feels like a normal girl. She feels invincible.
But in the narrow alleys of Sangenjaya, nothing is as it seems. Soon all of Hana's hope, her optimism, and her drive, will be tested to the limit . . .
A story of enduring friendship and deep betrayal, Sisters in Yellow is a masterpiece of teenage dreams and adult cruelties that confirms Mieko Kawakami as one of the great writers of her generation.
Readers love Sisters in Yellow:
'My new favourite book of ALL TIME. The ending absolutely destroyed me.'
'A powerful, emotionally charged exploration of friendship, survival and the quiet brutality of inequality'
'Mieko Kawakami doesn't need a high-speed chase to create tension; she lets a heavy, unsettling mood seep into the floorboards'
'Confirms Kawakami's place as one of the most vital voices in contemporary literature'
'The character building is second to none . . . Mieko Kawakami is a generational talent'
'This is Kawakami at her best. Not for a second does the pace let up.'"
"Bestselling author of BREASTS AND EGGS, Mieko Kawakami invites readers back into her immediately recognizable fictional world with this new, extraordinary novel and demonstrates yet again why she is one of today's most uncategorizable, insightful, and talented novelists.
Fuyuko Irie is a freelance copy editor in her mid-thirties. Working and living alone in a city where it is not easy to form new relationships, When Fuyoku stops one day on a Tokyo street and notices her reflection in a storefront window, what she sees is a drab, awkward, and spiritless woman who has lacked the strength to change her life and decides to do something about it.
As the long-overdue change occurs, however, painful episodes from Fuyuko's past surface and her behaviors slip further and further beyond the pale.
“Kawakami’s novel is uncompromisingly candid in its appraisal of the harm women inflict on one another, while never losing sight of the overarching structures that lead them to do so in the first place. Compact and supple, it’s a strikingly intelligent feat.”—JO HAMYA, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW"
"'Breathtaking' Haruki Murakami, international bestselling author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles
On a hot summer’s day in a poor suburb of Tokyo we meet three women: thirty-year-old Natsu, 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 Natsu’s rundown apartment, providing a catalyst for each woman to grapple with their own anxieties and their relationships with one another.
Ten years later, we meet Natsu again. She is now a writer and finds 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 full length English language debut from a major new international talent."
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