Weasels in the Attic | Granta

  • Published: 03/08/2023
  • ISBN: 9781783789764
  • Granta Books
  • 80 pages

Weasels in the Attic

Hiroko Oyamada

Translated by David Boyd

Two friends meet across three dinners. In the back room of a pet shop, they snack on dried shrimps and discuss fish-breeding. In a remote new home in the mountains, they look for a solution to a weasel infestation. During a dinner party in a blizzard, a mounting claustrophobia makes way for uneasy dreams. Their conversations often take them in surprising directions, but when one of the men becomes a father, more and more is left unsaid.

With emotional acuity and a wry humour, Weasels in the Attic it is an uncanny and striking reflection on fertility, masculinity, and marriage in contemporary Japan.

Simmers with eerie tension and bursts with unforgettable monologues

NPR

Oyamada is in complete control of her talent... A writer flexing their muscles and preparing for something truly profound

Japan Times

Surreal and mesmerizing

Praise for THE HOLE, The New York Times

The Author

Born in Hiroshima in 1983, HIROKO OYAMADA a is the author of two novellas: The Factory, which won the Shincho Prize for New Writers, and The Hole, which won Japan’s prestigious Akutagawa Prize. Oyamada has also written numerous short stories and essays.

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The Translator

David Boyd is Assistant Professor of Japanese at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He has translated stories by Genichiro Takahashi, Masatsugu Ono and Toh EnJoe, among others. His translation of Hideo Furukawa’s Slow Boat won the 2017/2018 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission (JUSFC) Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. With Sam Bett, he is cotranslating the novels of Mieko Kawakami.

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From the Same Author

Hiroko Oyamada on Granta.com

Fiction | The Online Edition

The Hole

Hiroko Oyamada

‘The hole felt as though it was exactly my size – a trap made just for me.’

Fiction | The Online Edition

Careless

Hiroko Oyamada

‘As I lay on the mattress, the white toe pads of the gecko floated up before me, against the vastness of the blue-black night. Rather than a presence, it seemed to me more like a trace, a barely discernible odour that flooded in on the air.’

Fiction | Granta 127

Spider Lilies

Hiroko Oyamada

‘The breeze smelled of many things: autumn and earth, the green of the countryside, face powder and old age.’