ABOUT
THE BOOK

The narrator is a teacher whose only close friend is Sumire, an aspiring young novelist. Sumire is suddenly smitten with a sophisticated businesswoman and accompanies her to Europe, and ultimately to an island off the coast of Greece, where she disappears without a trace, leaving only lineaments of her fate: computer accounts of bizarre events and stories within stories. The teacher, summoned to assist in the search for her, experiences his own ominous, haunting visions, which lead him nowhere but home to Japan – and there, under the expanse of deep space and the still-orbiting Sputnik, he finally achieves a true understanding of his beloved.