Referring to a book of 97 stories called NP written by a depressed Japanese writer, Banana Yoshimoto tells the story of a narrator's involvement with his estranged wife and two children and of the effect the stories have had on everyone who has tried to translate them.

N.P. Paperback Banana Yoshimoto

Literature & Fiction

BANANA YOSHIMOTO

Contemporary

Faber and Faber Limited

In these six stories, the author of "Tugumi" and "NP" explores themes of time, healing and fate, and how her urban, sophisticated, independent young men and women come to terms with them. The stories are a blend of traditional Japanese and contemporary popular culture.

Lizard

Short Stories & Anthologies

Faber&Faber

Amrita

Washington Square/Pocket Bks

An actress dies in shocking circumstances. She leaves behind an unconventional extended family of three who embark on a journey through grief and suffering, memories lost and gained, forbidden romance, redemption and recovery, and a confrontation with spirits on a remote Pacific island.

Faber Paperbacks

Yoshimoto has a magical ability to animate the lives of her young characters, and here she spins the stories of three women, all bewitched into a spiritual sleep. One, mourning a lost lover, finds herself sleepwalking at night. Another, who has embarked on a relationship with a man whose wife is in a coma, finds herself suddenly unable to stay awake. A third finds her sleep haunted by another woman whom she was once pitted against in a love triangle. Sly and mystical as a ghost story, with a touch of Kafkaesque surrealism, Asleep is an enchanting new book from one of the best writers in contemporary international fiction.

Asleep

Asleep tells the stories of three women, all bewitched into a spiritual sleep. One, mourning a lost love, finds herself sleepwalking at night. Another, embarking on a relationship with a man whose wife is in a coma, finds herself unable to stay awake. The third finds her sleep haunted.

Literary

In Kitchen, a young Japanese woman named Mikage Sakurai struggles to overcome the death of her grandmother. She gradually grows close to one of her grandmother's friends, Yuichi, from a flower shop and ends up staying with him and his transgender mother, Eriko.

Kitchen

Maria is the only daughter of an unmarried woman. She has grown up at the seaside alongside her cousin Tsugumi, a lifelong invalid, charismatic, spoiled and occasionally cruel. Now Maria's father is finally able to bring Maria and her mother to Tokyo, ushering Maria into a world of university, impending adulthood, and a 'normal' family. When Tsugumi invites Maria to spend a last summer by the sea, a restful idyll becomes a time of dramatic growth as Tsugumi finds love, and Maria learns the true meaning of home and family. She also has to confront both Tsugumi's inner strength and the real possibility of losing her.

Goodbye Tsugumi

FABER

Hardboiled opens as the narrator, a woman in her thirties, treks high above her secluded mountain hotel. As so often in Yoshimoto's supremely atmospheric stories, it is memory that forms the backdrop against which the present unfolds. In this case it is the memory of an old lover - the only woman she ever had intimate relations with - who died a year to the day previously. What unfolds is a night of intimation and blurred memory, disturbing signs and half-forgotten moments, as the narrator confronts the fears and the sense of loss that haunt her. In Hard Luck we find another female narrator, this one keeping vigil by the side of her sister who lies in a coma. Together with her father, and the brother of her sister's fiance, they appear almost trapped in a void, as they wait for the sister's death. Collectively the two stories brilliantly explore themes of love, loss and the ties that bind.

Hardboiled / Hard Luck

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by BANANA YOSHIMOTO. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by BANANA YOSHIMOTO

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by BANANA YOSHIMOTO. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

N.P. Paperback Banana Yoshimoto

Lizard

Amrita

Amrita

Asleep

Asleep

Kitchen

Goodbye Tsugumi

Goodbye Tsugumi

Hardboiled / Hard Luck