Life for Sale-Yukio Mishima

Published: 1968 (Shueisha) Yukio Mishima’s novel, Life for Sale, is a rollicking surrealist novel that follows a young salaryman, Hanio, who fails to commit suicide and then turns to an ad in the paper to do the trick. Hanio, nihilistic and without family, decides that he will sell his life to anyone by any meansContinue reading “Life for Sale-Yukio Mishima”

Earthlings-Sayaka Murata

Published: 2018 (Shinchosa) Setting: 1990’s and 2010’s Tokyo and rural Nagano Summary: In Murata’s second novel to be widely-translated, Earthlings, an idiosyncratic young girl named Natsuki confronts childhood trauma in an unorthodox and revealing manner, ultimately ending in total detachment from human “Earthlings,” and their society at large, twenty years later. Natsuki, unfit to be in her normalContinue reading “Earthlings-Sayaka Murata”