Kyoko Yoshida Livres

With a blend of deadpan humor and visceral storytelling, this collection features nineteen short stories that blur the lines between reality and imagination. Each tale takes readers through alternate realities that are both comic and hauntingly beautiful. Showcasing contemporary surrealism, the narratives are mischievous and dissonant, offering a bewildering exploration of the human experience. This debut collection marks Kyoko Yoshida as a significant new voice in transnational literature, appealing to both Japanese and international audiences.

Yuki has not slept in two months. He's been infected with genuine insomnia a condition spreading throughout the city's high-profile businessmen. At first, this is a condition worth boasting about: the less Yuki sleeps, the better he feels, and he gathers with the city's elite in clubs and bars to compare how long they've been awake. It is only when he visits a sanatorium that Yuki is told his memory is quickly deteriorating, and, suddenly, Yoshida's fragmented style starts to make sense... Dream-like, sensual and unnerving, these offerings by Kyoko Yoshida, a Japanese author writing in English, surprise the reader with their texture and imagery. Spring Sleepers, the title story, frames insomnia as the contemporary condition the narrative sliding from metropolitan hyperawareness to delirious exhaustion in the space of a few pages. Spring Awakening, a koan-like mediation, describes a newly born eel emerging from then returning to its home. Finally, Yoshida reflects on her time spent in Norwich, the City of Writing