Dragon Palace -- Hiromi Kawakami, Paperback

"How can a person resist?"--The Paris Review

Stories from a Japanese master of transformative fiction, where reality,
myth, and human foibles meet shifting dimensions of gender, biology,
and destiny.

From the bestselling author of Strange Weather in Tokyo comes this otherworldly collection of eight stories, each a masterpiece of transformation, infused with humor, sex, and the universal search for love and beauty--in a world where the laws of time and space, and even species boundaries, don't apply. Meet a shape-shifting con man, a goddess who uses sex to control her followers, an elderly man possessed by a fox spirit, a woman who falls in love with her 400-year-old ancestor, a kitchen god with three faces in a weasel-infested apartment block, moles who provide underground sanctuary for humans who have lost the will to live, a man nurtured through life by his seven extraordinary sisters, and a woman who is handed from husband to husband until she is finally able to return to the sea.

Author: Hiromi Kawakami
Publisher: Monkey
Published: 09/19/2023
Pages: 160
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.40lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.00w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9781737625353

Review Citation(s):
Foreword 08/27/2023
Booklist 08/31/2023

About the Author

HIROMI KAWAKAMI is one of Japan's most popular novelists. Many of her books have been published in English, including Manazuru, The Nakano Thrift Shop, Parade, Record of a Night Too Brief, Strange Weather in Tokyo (shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2013), and The Ten Loves of Nishino. People from My Neighborhood, translated by Ted Goossen, was published by Granta Books in 2020 and Soft Skull Press in 2021.

TED GOOSSEN is the editor of The Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories. He translated Haruki Murakami's Wind/Pinball and The Strange Library, and co-translated (with Philip Gabriel) Men Without Women and Killing Commendatore. He is currently translating Hiromi Kawakami's Third Love for Soft Skull Press (forthcoming in 2024).