Description

So amazing it took my breath away’ Haruki Murakami, international bestselling author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles

Breasts and Eggs explores the inner conflicts of an adolescent girl who refuses to communicate with her mother except through writing. Through the story of these women, Kawakami paints a portrait of womanhood in contemporary Japan, probing questions of gender and beauty norms and how time works on the female body.

Breast and Eggs is a thrilling English language debut from Japan’s brightest young talent, Mieko Kawakami.

Publisher Review

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 * 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 * 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 * 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 * Breasts and Eggs unwraps with great care the puzzle of being alive today, inviting us to challenge how we think and deepen how we feel. Mieko Kawakami is a writer of rare candour and brilliance. — Ronan 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 * Breasts and Eggs is incredible and propulsive: deadpan on modern femininity, tilting between intimate relationships and sweeping views of Tokyo and Osaka, and abundantly peopled with characters who have lots to say. One to get lost in. — Naoise Dolan, author of Exciting Times Breasts and Eggs will appeal to readers who delight in finding the female intellect prioritized on the page; if you like Sheila Heti, you’ll love Mieko Kawakami. * NPR * 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. Perhaps someday she will return to the nearly perfect, natural primal world of Breasts and Eggs. — Haruki Murakami, author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles Kawakami’s prose is bold, modern, and surprising. Breasts and Eggs is a moving story about womanhood and modern life told through the lens of a supremely confident writer. — An Yu, author of Braised Pork As if traced before our eyes, objects close at hand are rendered with uncommon precision. An incredible display of nonchalance backed by careful diction. — Yoko Ogawa, author of The Memory Police Mieko Kawakami lobbed a literary grenade into the fusty, male-dominated world of Japanese fiction with ‘Chichi to Ran'(‘Breasts and Eggs’) * Economist *