Gifted

Suzumi Suzuki (trans. Allison Markin Powell)

‘Demonstrates that death is the only way forward. Oozes with maternal cruelty.’

Yoko Ogawa, author of The Memory Police

‘Gifted explores beauty, and the body itself, as a troubling inheritance, a complicated gift that, at least for women, belongs to you but is never fully in your control.’

Rebecca Hussey, Words Without Borders

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‘In this unsentimental novella, a young woman working as a bar hostess and sex worker in Tokyo reckons with several unresolved personal traumas … Based on Suzuki’s own experiences in the adult industry, the book chronicles the young woman’s wanderings from bar to bar, hospital to home, with brutal honesty.’

The New Yorker

A moving portrayal of a troubled mother–daughter relationship, shortlisted for Japan’s prestigious Akutagawa Prize.

In 2008, the unnamed narrator of Gifted is working as a hostess and living in Tokyo’s nightlife district. One day, her estranged mother, who is seriously ill, suddenly turns up at her door.

As the mother approaches the end of her life, the two women must navigate their strained relationship, while the narrator also reckons with events happening in her own life, including the death of a close friend — all under the bright lights of Tokyo‘s ‘sleepless town’, Kabukicho.

In sharp, elegant prose, and based on the author’s own experiences as a sex worker, Gifted heralds the breakthrough of an exciting new literary talent.

‘Demonstrates that death is the only way forward. Oozes with maternal cruelty.’

Yoko Ogawa, author of The Memory Police

‘Gifted explores beauty, and the body itself, as a troubling inheritance, a complicated gift that, at least for women, belongs to you but is never fully in your control.’

Rebecca Hussey, Words Without Borders

View all reviews

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Details

Format:Paperback

Size: 198mm × 129mm

Extent:112pp

ISBN (13):9781915590787

RRP:£9.99

Pub date:24 Oct 2024

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AUTHOR

Suzumi Suzuki

Suzumi Suzuki is an acclaimed Japanese sociologist and columnist. She graduated from Keio University majoring in Environment and Information Studies, and later received a master’s degree from Tokyo University. She worked as an adult video actress before becoming a journalist for Nikkei Inc. She is also the author of Sell Your Body, and It’s Goodbye (2016), Flowers for Love and the Womb (2017), A Prostitute’s Bookshelf (2022), and Letters of Correspondence (2021), co-written with Japan’s most acclaimed feminist scholar Chizuko Ueno. Gifted is her debut novel.

TRANSLATOR

Allison Markin Powell

Allison Markin Powell is a literary translator, editor, and publishing consultant. She received the 2020 PEN America Translation Prize for The Ten Loves of Nishino by Hiromi Kawakami. Her other translations include works by Osamu Dazai, Kanako Nishi, and Ryunosuke Akutagawa.