Vanishing World
ABOUT
THE BOOK
From the author of the international bestseller ‘Convenience Store Woman,’ a convention-defying and taboo-busting novel, and a radically reimagined vision of sex, family and society:
Amane is ten years old when she discovers she’s not like everyone else. Her school friends were all conceived the normal way, by artificial insemination, and raised in the normal way, by parents in ‘clean’, sexless marriages. But Amane’s parents committed the ultimate taboo: they fell in love, had sex and procreated. As Amane grows up and enters adulthood, she does her best to fit in and live her life like the rest of society: cultivating intense relationships with anime characters, and limiting herself to extra-marital sex, as is the norm. Still, she can’t help questioning what sex and marriage are for.
But when Amane and her husband hear about Eden, an experimental town where residents are selected at random to be artificially inseminated en masse (including men who are fitted with artificial wombs), the family unit does not exist and children are raised collectively and anonymously, they decide to try living there. But can this bold experiment build the brave new world Amane desires, or will it push her to breaking point?
Original title in Japanese Shoumetsu Sekai published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha (Dec 2015)
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Ginny
Tapley Takemori
Ginny Tapley Takemori has translated Ryu Murakami and Kyoko Nakajima, among others.
Ginny Tapley Takemori has translated Ryu Murakami and Kyoko Nakajima, among others.
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
In a world where children are commonly born through artificial insemination and sexual intercourse between spouses is taboo, the story unfolds through the perspective of the protagonist, Amane, who struggles to escape her mother’s attempts to impose her values while trying to convince herself that her own love and marriage are right. The depictions of family meals and conversations with friends at school and work feel indistinguishable from modern Japan. This creates a disorienting sensation, blurring the line between fiction and reality. The content, which overturns common sense and values surrounding family, romance, and gender, leaves the mind reeling and dizzy. What is normal? What is madness? This is a work with such power that its world lingers long after the final page. (Saiwaicho Okayama Public Library)