Vanishing World

"Normality is the creepiest madness there is..." In our near-future world, children are solely conceived by artificial insemination. Even sex between married couples is viewed as taboo. Amane's family is irregular. Her parents copulated to create her and hope that she too will find love and have a child with the person she marries. But Amane falls in line with society's way of thinking and wants a regular 'clean' marriage. Then she hears of a place that is the subject of a social experiment. Everyone in Paradise-Eden will act as one big family. Could this be the perfect third way? Praise for Sayaka Murata's fiction: 'Exhilarating, weird and funny' Sally Rooney 'Radical, hilarious, heartbeaking' Elif Batuman 'A gift to anyone who has ever felt at odds with the world' Ruth Ozeki Review: Makes the ordinary world as we see it look strange again... Publishers will continue to seek out imitations of [Sayaka's] vision - but why bother, when the real thing is so good? * Financial Times * In the imagination of Sayaka Murata, nothing seems to be off limits... Like The Handmaid's Tale on acid... Quintessentially Murata... Murata deploys both visceral language and body horror to convey Amane's lust.. An eye-popping plot... It invites us to consider how reproductive gender equality could transform society, with chilling ramifications * New York Times * Murata dispenses with conventional world-building and incidental detail, focusing on the points where character and society come into conflict. Her writing is compulsive, and she has an uncanny gift for intimate observations that get under the skin... Vanishing World narrates the creep of a new worldview... A reminder of how quickly even the strangest ideas can become convention * Guardian * Japanese fiction leads a boom in translated novels and Murata is its queen, striking a chord around the world with her weird tales of urban alienation under patriarchy and capitalism... Fit to burst with eye-popping twists and conceits... A typically wild ride * Daily Mail * Murata is a phenomenon... Vanishing World could not have arrived at a more fitting moment, given the Trump administrations' preoccupation with women's bodily autonomy... Murata's brilliantly unsettling ending will leave you reeling and questioning your own beliefs * Stylist * Japan's answer to Brave New World... Murata has the uncanny prescience of the best sci-fi writers * Daily Telegraph * Quirky and thought-provoking * Grazia * A bleak, funny vision of a future where our sad world gets a lot worse * Sunday Times * Through her fiction, Ms. Murata has resolutely explored the strangeness of the cultural practices we otherwise consider ordinary... For those who feel haunted by the whole idea of the normal, Vanishing World offers, like all of this writer's books, something you just can't find anywhere else * Wall Street Journal * Author Biography: Sayaka Murata has won all of Japan's major literary prizes. She is author of Convenience Store Woman, Earthlings and Life Ceremony. Ginny Tapley Takemori has translated Ryu Murakami and Kyoko Nakajima, among others.