Hiromi Kawakami People from My Neighborhood

Nominated for the 2021 Shirley Jackson Award From the author of the internationally bestselling Strange Weather in Tokyo , a collection of interlinking stories that masterfully blend the mundane and the mythical--"fairy tales in the best Brothers Grimm tradition: na?f, magical, and frequently veering into the macabre" ( Financial Times ). 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 and brief enough to allow for dipping in and out--Hiromi Kawakami creates a universe ruled by mystery and transformation.