Dragon Palace
Included in The New Yorker's Best Books of 2023
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.
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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 in 2020.
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.
"Unique and attention-grabbing, Dragon Palace is a collection of open-ended fantasy tales about thwarted love and lost opportunities."
--Eileen Gonzalez, Foreword Reviews
"Exceedingly unique... Kawakami melds the mundane and banal with the surreal and fantastic, to good effect."
--Cameron Bassindale, The Japan Society Review
PRAISE FOR HIROMI KAWAKAMI
"Beguiling and beautiful."
--The Times
"Quirky and delicate . . . timeless . . . I fell totally under the spell."
--Daily Mail
"Kawakami knows she doesn't need fireworks to keep the reader entertained, and is pushing her exploration of form and style."
--The Japan Times
PRAISE FOR PEOPLE FROM MY NEIGHBORHOOD
"Magical and engaging."
--Publishers Weekly
"I love miniatures, the way big ideas are shrunk to digestible bits and dollhouse-size designs, where everything is there -- just smaller. In thirty-six stories in 120 pages, Kawakami performs this Shrinky Dink macro-to-micro transformation, which, surprisingly, also gives rise to ever expanding mysteries ... Each tiny tale is sheathed in a veil of cellophane that, when unwrapped, holds multitudes."
--Orion Magazine
PRAISE FOR THE NAKANO THRIFT SHOP
"Kawakami lavishes attention on quotidian minutiae and exquisitely awkward pauses, ending scenes on maddeningly unresolved but vibrant images."
--The New York Times
"Charming and engrossing."
--Kirkus Reviews
"A gentle, humorous novel."
--The Wall Street Journal
PRAISE FOR MANAZURU
"Kawakami has a remarkable ability to obscure reality, fantasy, and memory, making the desire for love feel hauntingly real."
--Publishers Weekly
