Two brilliant, multi-layered longform stories about the yearning for connection in early 21st centruy Tokyo, from a prize-winning Japanese writer
“Nothing short of superb… This book gives me hope for the future of Japanese literature” — Kenzaburo Oe, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
“Compact, ruthless, governed by a persuasive sense of dread… captures the ennui that has paralyzed a generation” — The New York Times Book Review
In 2 stunning tales by novelist-playwright Toshiki Okada, characters stagger and thrash, bound by a generational hunger for human connection.
On the eve of the Iraq War, a man and a woman meet in a nightclub in Tokyo. They go to a love hotel, and spend the next five days in a torrid affair. Written in a stream of consciousness, with the reader’s perceptions shifting and melting into one another as these two characters find unexpected deliverance in their fleeting joys.
A woman living in a damp flat obsesses on the filthy state of her home. Though she remains in bed, her inner life spirals further and further into her memories and anxieties as she longs for something more from her husband, even as she knows that she already has enough.
Mixing snapshots of moments high and low, these stories show us young people adrift in a world without security, desiring things they can’t quite name. Acutely insightful and beautifully written, The End of the Moment We Had introduces an unsettlingy honest voice in Japanese fiction.
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