Life Ceremony

The legendary Sayaka Murata returns with Life Ceremony, her first collection of short tales ever to be translated into English. Murata is especially well-liked in Japan for her short tales, which are consistently filled with an otherworldly imagination and uncanny sense, and may be either pleasant or disturbing at times.

In these twelve tales, Murata conjures up a peculiar concoction of terror and comedy to depict both the misfits and the loners, as well as to subvert social mores and customs in order to more effectively challenge them. The reader must decide whether the tales are set in the future, in modern-day Japan, or in an other reality since the people often look unusual in their normalcy in a terrifyingly bizarre environment. In "A First-Rate Material," Nana and Naoki are joyfully engaged, but a conflict over Naoki's dislike of the custom of using dead people's corpses for furniture, accessories, and clothes threatens to ruin their idyllic wedding day. The story of "Lovers on the Breeze" is presented from the viewpoint of a curtain in a young child's bedroom that tries to stop little Naoko from kissing a boy from her class as it watches her with jealousy. "Eating the City" delves into the peculiar customs around food and foraging, while "Hatchling" brilliantly concludes the collection by portraying the damaged psyche of an individual who makes an excessive effort to blend in.

Murata raises important questions about what it is to be a person in our society and provides surprising and thought-provoking solutions in these weird and fascinating tales of friendship and family, sex and intimacy, and uniqueness and belonging.