- Published: 01/07/2021
- ISBN: 9781783785698
- Granta Books
- 256 pages
Earthlings
Sayaka Murata
Translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori
Natsuki isn’t like the other girls. As youths, she and her cousin Yuu spent the summers in the wild Nagano mountains, hoping for a spaceship to transport her home. When a terrible sequence of events threatens to part the cousins for ever, they make a promise: survive, no matter what.
Now, Natsuki is grown. She lives quietly in an asexual marriage, pretending to be normal, and hiding the horrors of her childhood from her family and friends. But dark shadows from Natsuki’s past are pursuing her. Fleeing the suburbs for the mountains, Natsuki prepares for a reunion with Yuu. Will he still remember their promise? And will he help her keep it? Dark, sharp and with a deeply unexpected twist, Earthlings is an exhilarating cosmic flight that will leave you reeling.
£8.99
I loved this book! It easily converted me to being an alien. A radical, hilarious, heartbreaking look at the crap we have all internalized in order to fit in and survive
Elif Batuman
A firecracker of a book...the story skates along the top of all this darkness, and shimmers with a deadpan wit. I loved it
Five Books
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Sayaka Murata on Granta.com
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Earthlings
Sayaka Murata
An excerpt from Earthlings, translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori.
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‘Hey, Nagaoka, wanna start a new cult with me?’
New fiction by Sayaka Murata, translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori.
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Chameleon
Tomoko Sawada & Sayaka Murata
‘If Sawada can transform herself without limit, maybe I can too.’ Sayaka Murata introduces Tomoko Sawada’s photographs, translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori.