The Horse and I

From bestselling author of If Cats Disappeared from the World comes a taut psychological mystery based on a real-life crime for fans of Butter and Diary of a Void. She works quietly in a coastal shipyard office, barely noticed by those around her. Life passes in grey repetition until one day, on the side of a road, she sees something that changes everything: a black horse, still and watching. From that moment, something begins to shift. As her obsession deepens, so does the double life she builds in secret. What begins with a quiet longing grows into something far more dangerous - and far more difficult to control. Horse and I is a haunting, slow-burning psychological novel about the hunger for freedom in a world that insists on keeping women small. With echoes of Butter and Diary of a Void, it probes the uneasy space between yearning and transgression, beauty and brutality, and asks how far a person will go for the one thing that makes them feel alive. A tense and mesmerising Japanese mystery where desire, silence, and power collide.

Genki Kawamura was born in Yokohama, Japan in 1979. In 2012, he published his first novel, If Cats Disappeared from the World, which has been translated into 35 languages and sold over 3 million copies worldwide. His other books include One Hundred Flowers, The Horse and I, and Whispering Rooms, co-authored with Marie Kondo. In 2022, Kawamura became the first Japanese filmmaker to receive the Best Director Award at the San Sebastián International Film Festival. In 2025, his second feature film Exit 8, inspired by a cult video game, was chosen as an Official Selection at the 78th Cannes Film Festival.