THE MILLION-COPY JAPANESE BESTSELLER
WINNER OF THE JAPAN BOOKSELLERS’ AWARD
MADE INTO AN AWARD-NOMINATED FILM
“A love letter to those who’ve always felt out of step with the world.” —Mikki Brammer, bestselling author of The Collected Regrets of Clover
From the internationally bestselling author of The Convenience Store By the Sea, a deeply moving story about the unexpected bond between a woman who has fled her Tokyo life for a seaside village and a young boy who cannot speak.
When Kiko escapes her hard Tokyo life for a rural village by the sea, the locals can’t help but question her intentions. Rumors start to fly and wariness spreads. Except nothing can be worse than where Kiko came from. Then, one day, Kiko stumbles across a boy who cannot speak. He’s shy and timid, a little wary himself. But when Kiko shares with him the tale of the 52-hertz whale—a creature whose voice rings through the vastness of the sea, but who cannot be heard, no matter how loud it sings—the boy begins to let her in on his own story, revealing the moment that forced him to stop singing and launching them on a journey to reclaim the boy’s voice, and in the process recover what it means to truly be heard.
A moving story that explores hope, survival, and the life-changing force of connection, The Woman, The Boy, and The Whale is the incredible masterpiece that launched Sonoko Machida as an internationally bestselling author—and is “exactly what the world needs right now” (Laurie Gilmore).
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