In the titular story, falling birth rates have led to a widespread preoccupation with ‘insemination’, and this is, for enigmatic reasons, tied to a new funeral rite called the ‘life ceremony’. The characters confront and smash taboos – whether those of a society similar to our own (as in ‘Body Magic’, about burgeoning female sexuality), or those of a fantastical future. But they do so within bounds which will be familiar to Murata’s readers. The thirteen stories collected here offer surprises. With Life Ceremony, a collection of short stories stylishly translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori, Murata cements her reputation as a writer preoccupied with the outcast and incongruous. Her 2018 follow-up Earthlings was a disturbing story of abuse, cannibalism and aliens.
And yet, such popular success couldn’t tempt her into safer territory. Murata was named a Vogue ‘Woman of the Year’. Originally published in Japanese, Convenience Store Woman sold two million copies worldwide and has been translated into twenty-three languages. Murata’s probing of the social contract has resonated. Sayaka Murata is best known for her 2016 Convenience Store Woman, a short, deadpan novel about a woman who finds refuge from convention in a job at a supermarket. Mixing taboo-breaking body horror with feminist revenge fables, old ladies who love each other and young women finding empathy and transformation in unlikely places, Life Ceremony is a wild ride to the outer edges of one of the most original minds in contemporary fiction.“Murata cements her reputation as a writer preoccupied with the outcast and incongruous”
Published in English for the first time, this exclusive edition also includes the story that first brought Sayaka Murata international acclaim: 'A Clean Marriage', which tells the story of a happily asexual couple who must submit to some radical medical procedures if they are to conceive a longed-for child.
From the author of international bestseller Convenience Store Woman comes a collection of short fiction: weird, out of this world and like nothing you've read before.Īn engaged couple falls out over the husband's dislike of clothes and objects made from human materials a young girl finds herself deeply enamoured with the curtain in her childhood bedroom people honour their dead by eating them and then procreating.
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