The author of Convenience Store Woman & master of the uncanny and unexpected takes the stage to discuss her body of work and her fascination with the unusual.
‘A strange, inventive, and disconcerting collection of dystopian fiction . . . Marvel at Murata’s brash imagination and bravery, but be warned: Life Ceremony is not for the squeamish.’
– New Statesman
Author of the cult sensation Convenience Store Woman, Sayaka Murata brings her penchant for the strange and otherworldly sense of imagination to her first ever collection of short stories to be translated into English.
Life Ceremony is a surprising cocktail of humour and horror, combining to create twelve stories about weird love, heartfelt friendships, and the uncomfortable nature of the human condition. In ‘Lovers on the Breeze’, a curtain in a child’s bedroom does its best to stop its resident from experiencing her first kiss; in ‘A First-Rate Material’, Nana and Naoki’s perfect wedding day is turned upside down after an argument over the conventional use of corpses as clothing, accessories, and furniture.
Whether set in contemporary Japan, the near future, and an up-for-interpretation alternate reality, these twisted and twisting tales challenge our very perceptions of reality to raise important questions about sex, gender, and what we consider to be ‘normal’.
Sayaka Murata has won all of Japan’s major literary prizes, and been named a Vogue Woman of the Year. She is the author of Earthlings and Convenience Store Woman, which has sold more than a million copies in Japan alone and been translated into twenty-three languages worldwide.
This event will be chaired by Clara Kumagai whose debut YA novel, Catfish Rolling, was nominated for the YOTO Carnegie Award, a finalist from the Great Reads Award and shortlisted for the 2023 KPMG Children’s Books Ireland Awards.