Touring The Land of the Dead

"e;A delicate, layered exploration of family, trauma, and memory . . . An intriguing introduction to a significant voice in contemporary Japanese fiction."e; -Kirkus ReviewsTwo tales about memory, loss and love, both told with stylistic inventiveness and breath-taking sensitivity. Taichi was forced to stop working almost a decade ago and since then he and his wife Natsuko have been getting by on her wages. But Natsuko is a woman accustomed to hardship. When her own family's fortune dried up years during her childhood, she lived a surreal hand-to-mouth existence shaped by her mother's refusal to accept her family's new station in life. When Natsuko sees an ad for a spa and recognizes the place as the former luxury hotel where she spent time as a child, she decides to take her sick husband, despite the cost. But the overnight visit triggers hard but ultimately redemptive memories relating to the complicated history of her family. Modelled on a classic story by Junichiro Tanizaki, Ninety-Nine Kisses is the second story in this book and it portrays in touching and lyrical fashion the lives of the four unmarried sisters in a historical, close-knit neighbourhood of contemporary Tokyo. "e;Magical."e; The Guardian, Most Anticipated Fiction of 2021"e;An ethereal novel combining two tales exploring memory, love, and loss."e; Vogue (UK)"e;Kashimada's writing is exceptional."e; The Spectator"e;While Kashimada's stories, like Murakami's, resist easy interpretation, the former revel in the beauty of experience, whether sorrowful or joyous, affirming life in all its strangeness, horror and mystery."e; The Times Literary Supplement (UK)"e;Only Kashimada can create this kind of world."e; Yoko Ogawa, author of The Memory Police