― Sayaka Murata, Interview, Guardian
What booksellers are saying about Vanishing World
- When we live in a world that’s constantly changing around us, how can we even define what it means to be human? With her signature page-turning prose and uncanny, off-kilter storytelling, Sayaka Murata’s latest explores these questions and lives up to her previous titles that are beloved by so many.
― Maddie Grimes, Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee | BUY
- Vanishing World is a triumph of speculative fiction. Set in an alternate Japan in which almost all children are conceived through artificial insemination, sex is out of fashion, and intercourse between married couples is considered incest, a woman tries to understand her sexuality. She is cursed by romantic and sexual impulses, at odds with the broader societal understanding of relationships. Her story is both an excavation and an assimilation–the more she understands herself, the more she is struck with the quiet, inescapable horror of being different.
― Charlie Marks, Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Virginia | BUY
- Marriage has become a platonic practicality in Japan. What remains of interpersonal relationships is artificial insemination for the sole purpose of reproduction. An outlier, Amane still finds physical and emotional satisfaction in intercourse, and thought her husband understood that about her, until they move into an experimental project that disrupts any and all of the family structures that Amane held sacred. An uncensored and introspective glimpse into a speculative reality, Vanishing World speaks to sexual taboos, family structure, and the role of relationships in postmodern society, challenging her readers with her signature Weirdness.
― Flora Arnsberger, Epilogue Books Chocolate Brews in Chapel Hill, North Carolina | BUY
About Sayaka Murata
SAYAKA MURATA is the author of many books, including Convenience Store Woman, winner of the Akutagawa Prize, Earthlings, and Life Ceremony. Murata has been named a Freeman’s “Future of New Writing” author and a Vogue Japan Woman of the Year.
GINNY TAPLEY TAKEMORI has translated works by more than a dozen Japanese writers, including Ryu Murakami. She lives at the foot of a mountain in Eastern Japan.
