People from my neighborhood : stories

Author

Hiromi Kawakami

Call Number

• FICTION KAWA (CEN)

Edition

First Soft Skull edition.

Languages

Translated from the Japanese.

Publication Information

New York, NY : Soft Skull Press, 2021.

Physical Description

xii, 159 pages ; 21 cm

Summary

"A bossy child who lives under a white cloth near a tree; a schoolgirl who keeps doll's brains in a desk drawer; an old man with two shadows, one docile and one rebellious; a diplomat no one has ever seen who goes fishing at an artificial lake no one has ever heard of. These are some of the inhabitants of People From My Neighborhood. In their lives, details of the local and everyday-the lunch menu at a tiny drinking place called the Love, the color and shape of the roof of the tax office-slip into accounts of duels, prophetic dreams, revolutions, and visitations from ghosts and gods. In twenty-six "palm of the hand" stories-fictions small enough to fit in the palm of one's hand-Hiromi Kawakami creates a universe ruled by mystery and transformation."--

Contents

• The secret
• Chicken hell
• Grandma
• The office
• Brains
• The crooner
• The school principal
• The love
• The juvenile delinquent
• The tenement
• The Hachirō lottery
• The magic spell
• Grandpa shadows
• The six-person apartments
• The rivals
• The elf
• The buriers
• Banana
• Lord of the flies
• The baseball game
• Torture
• Bass fishing
• Pigeonitis
• Sports day
• Fruit
• The white dove
• Eye medicine
• Weightlessness
• Hair
• Baby
• The family trade
• The bottomless swamp
• Falsification
• Refrigerator
• The shacks
• The empress.