九段　理江

In Schoolgirl, a wealthy housewife, dogged by ennui, struggles to connect with her teenage daughter, who turns to YouTube to vent her frustration with the climate crisis and muse about her day-to-day life in Tōkyō. Through the fog of generational tension and unresolved ethics, mother and daughter find a shared connection in Osamu Dazai’s 1939 novella Schoolgirl. In Bad Music, a music teacher named Sonata, the daughter of a famous composer, contemplates the path she has taken. Through correspondence with her roommate Sae, a painter, she discovers art’s capacity to exceed the boundaries of acceptable behaviour — or perhaps, to stay within them. As she plots something perverse enough to risk her job, Sonata considers how truth is lost — or found — through performance. Darkly funny and stunningly mysterious, these two novellas pinpoint the effects of technology, conflicting desires, and the shifts and rifts in relationships. Rie Qudan, winner of one of Japan’s most prestigious literary awards, the Akutagawa Prize, explores the affectation and compromise required of us all, providing a disquieting view of the many faces of modern life.

Welcome to the Japan of tomorrow. Here, the practice of a radical sympathy toward criminals has become the norm – and a grand skyscraper in the heart of Tokyo is planned to house wrongdoers in compassionate comfort. Acclaimed architect Sara Machina has been tasked with designing the city's new centrepiece, but is riven by doubt. As she casts her mind to the terrible crime she experienced as a young girl, she wonders if she might think against the grain of her time: could it be that criminals deserve the punishment and disdain of the past? In search of solace, in need of creative inspiration, Sara turns to the knowing words of an AI chatbot…

Awarded Japan's highest literary prize, Sympathy Tower Tokyo is an extraordinary novel from one of the most exciting new voices in world literature. Partly inspired by conversations with an artificial intelligence, it offers an extraordinary defence of the power of language written by humans, a touching exploration of the imaginative impulse, and an often hilarious send up of our modern world's unrelenting conformity.

The award-winning, bestselling Japanese phenomenon: a speculative, prophetic novel following a young and brilliant celebrity architect in Tokyo who...

Japan in der nahen Zukunft. Statt Kriminelle zu bestrafen, begegnet man ihnen mit Milde und Mitgefühl. So soll die renommierte Architektin Sara Machina nun ein modernes Gefängnis gestalten. Im Zentrum Tokios wird ein Luxusturm für die innovative Inhaftierung von Straftätern entstehen. Doch Sara zweifelt an dem Konzept: