Breasts and Eggs

On a hot summer's day in a poor suburb of Tokyo we meet three women: thirty-year-old Natsuko, her older sister Makiko, and Makiko's teenage daughter Midoriko. Makiko, an ageing hostess despairing the loss of her looks, has travelled to Tokyo in search of breast enhancement surgery. She's accompanied by Midoriko, who has recently stopped speaking, finding herself unable to deal with her own changing body and her mother's self-obsession. Her silence dominates Natsuko's rundown apartment, providing a catalyst for each woman to grapple with their own anxieties and their relationships with one another.Eight years later, we meet Natsuko again. She is now a writer and find herself on a journey back to her native city, returning to memories of that summer and her family's past as she faces her own uncertain future.

Long-listed for Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 2021 (UK)

I can never forget the sense of pure astonishment I felt when I first read Mieko Kawakami’s novella Breasts and Eggs . . . breathtaking . . . Mieko Kawakami is always ceaselessly growing and evolving -- Haruki Murakami
Incredible -- Yoko Ogawa, author of The Memory Police
Breasts and Eggs, which caused a small sensation upon its publication in the UK and US last year, was a fierce yet thoughtful tale of working-class womanhood New Statesman
Bold, modern, and surprising -- An Yu, author of Braised Pork
It is Tokyo as it is lived in, not a film set New York Times
If you like Sheila Heti, you'll love Mieko Kawakami NPR
A dazzling intellectual thriller by a new Japanese literary star . . . stunning Financial Times
Breasts and Eggs is stunning - its rage, wry humour and nihilism rendered with real care. -- Olivia Sudjic, author of Sympathy
Incredible and propulsive -- Naoise Dolan
Fierce and sweet and I would like the rest of Kawakami’s work translated, please -- Sarah Moss, author of Summerwater, in The Times
Mieko Kawakami is a writer of rare candour and brilliance -- Rónán Hession, author of Leonard and Hungry Paul
Already a literary sensation . . . Kawakami writes with unsettling precision about the body — its discomforts, its appetites, its smells and secretions. -- Katie Kitamura New York Times
An original and deeply moving novel—that is by turns hilarious, sexy, devastating, and always unforgettable. Breasts and Eggs crackles with provocative insights into the passage of time, friendship, money, and the pleasures and pains of living in a body. -- Laura van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel
One of Japan’s brightest stars is set to explode across the global skies of literature . . . Kawakami is both a writer’s writer and an entertainer, a thinker and constantly evolving stylist who manages to be highly readable and immensely popular. Japan Times
Mieko Kawakami lobbed a literary grenade into the fusty, male-dominated world of Japanese fiction with 'Chichi to Ran'('Breasts and Eggs') Economist
Kawakami is emerging as one of Japan’s most prominent young literary voices, with thoughtfulness and eccentricity at the heart of her prose Culture Trip
So finely crafted, every few lines could be a haiku, and you almost forget how difficult it must have been to create something so perfectly simple. And when you notice the clarity, meditativeness, eccentricity, quirk and wit in her writing, you immediately understand how Murakami could be inspired by a writer like this -- Praise for Ms Ice Cream Sandwich Ladies Finger
The novel details the lives of three women: the 30-year-old unmarried narrator, her older sister Makiko, who’s obsessed with getting breast implants and her daughter, Midoriko. With humour and compassion, Kawakami explores female oppression in Japan, reproduction rights and motherhood Now Magazine
Originally published in Mieko Kawakami’s native Japanese, the author’s stellar 2008 novel Breast and Eggs is being translated to English for the first time ever this month, opening her bold writing up to a wider audience Dazed and Confused

Mieko Kawakami is the author of the internationally best-selling novel, Breasts and Eggs, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and one of TIME's Best 10 Books of 2020. Born in Osaka, Kawakami made her literary debut as a poet in 2006, and published her first novella, My Ego, My Teeth, and the World, in 2007. Her writing is known for its poetic qualities and its insights into the female body, ethical questions, and the dilemmas of modern society. Her works have been translated into many languages and are available all over the world. She has received numerous prestigious literary awards in Japan for her work, including the Akutagawa Prize, the Tanizaki Prize, and the Murasaki Shikibu Prize. She lives in Tokyo, Japan.

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