‘A funny, moving and occasionally bizarre exploration of life’s upheavals and reversals’ Financial Times
‘As gruesome as it is gripping… the writing is extraordinarily vivid… Highly recommended’ Independent
‘Mesmerising… Seksik’s portrait of Zweig’s final months is dignified and tender’ Financial Times
‘Delicious and intriguing’ Daily Telegraph
‘A monumental, phenomenal book’ De Morgen
‘A master of the historical novel’ Guardian
About the Author and the Translator
HIROMI KAWAKAMI was born in Tokyo in 1958. She has written numerous novels—among them Strange Weather in Tokyo, The Nakano Thrift Shop and Manazuru—and short-story collections, and has garnered many of Japan’s top literary prizes. Kawakami was shortlisted for both the 2013 Man Asian Literary Prize, and the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Her work has been published in more than twenty languages. Her story “A Snake Stepped On” in this collection won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1996.
LUCY NORTH, born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, studied at the University of Cambridge and Harvard University and has a PhD in modern Japanese literature. Her translations of Taeko Kōno were published in Toddler Hunting and Other Stories. Lucy lived for many years in Boston and Tokyo, and is now based in Hastings, on the south coast of England.
Copyright
Series Editors: David Karashima and Michael Emmerich
Translation Editor: Elmer Luke
Pushkin Press
71–75 Shelton Street
London, WC2H 9JQ
HEBI O FUMU © Hiromi Kawakami, 1996
English language translation © Lucy North 2017
Record of a Night Too Brief was first published as Hebi o Fumu in 1996
First published by Pushkin Press in 2017
Parts of “Record of a Night Too Brief” appeared, in slightly different form, in Words without Borders, July 2012.
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the British Centre for Literary Translation and the Nippon Foundation
ISBN 9781782272724
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