Sisters in Yellow

Rising star Mieko Kawakami reaches new heights in this pacy, thrilling novel, a Japanese Breaking Bad, in which a group of friends fight for freedom, independence, and survival in Tokyo of the 1990s, a world rapidly dividing into haves and have-nots. All of them are fleeing something. Growing up without a father, Hana’s tired of the pity in her classmates’ eyes, and finds a flashier mother figure in Kimiko. Kimiko is older than Hana's mother but seems much younger, chatting easily about school and boys and wanting a better life. Fate throws them together with two more young women—bruised but not broken by life. Together the four set out to remake their lives, fighting predatory lenders, organized criminals, and plain bad luck as they open a bar called Lemon. Keeping the business going, and trying to take care of each other, forms the core of this enrapturing novel. It is a story of startling reversals and vivid portraits of the matriarchy of Tokyo nightlife and its adjacent criminal underclasses. From the bar owners to the aging hostesses to the young street touts coaxing people off the street to places like Lemon, everyone wants a chance at renewal, but can everyone get it? Narrated by Hana in Kawakami’s trademark evocatively poetic style and paced like a noir, Sisters in Yellow will be the literary blockbuster of the season. This epic of friendship and betrayal is the kind of book one longs to return to when away from it: a world unto itself, and a book that makes you think while it produces immensities of feeling. It is a major novel that, like so many of the best recent phenomena—from Donna Tartt to Hanya Yanagihara—explores how we survive (or don't) together.

MIEKO KAWAKAMI is the acclaimed author of the international bestsellers Breasts and Eggs, Heaven, and All The Lovers of the Night. Her books, translated into over twenty languages, are known for their insights into the female body, and preoccupation with ethics and modern society. Kawakami has won the Akutagawa Prize, the Tanizaki Prize, and the Murasaki Shikibu Prize. Heaven, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd, was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize. Born in Osaka, Kawakami lives in Tokyo. LAUREL TAYLOR is a translator, poet, and researcher. She has translated works by Kaori Fujino, Minae Mizumura, Shibasaki Tomoka, and Aoko Matsudo, among others. HITOMI YOSHIO is the translator of Natsuko Imamura's This Is Amiko, Do You Copy? and the co-translator of Mieko Kawakami's Ashes of Spring.