Breasts and Eggs

I can never forget the sense of pure astonishment I felt when I first read Mieko Kawakami’s novella Breasts and Eggs . . . breathtaking . . . Mieko Kawakami is always ceaselessly growing and evolving -- Haruki Murakami

Incredible -- Yoko Ogawa, author of The Memory Police

Breasts and Eggs, which caused a small sensation upon its publication in the UK and US last year, was a fierce yet thoughtful tale of working-class womanhood ― New Statesman

Bold, modern, and surprising -- An Yu, author of Braised Pork

It is Tokyo as it is lived in, not a film set ― New York Times

If you like Sheila Heti, you'll love Mieko Kawakami ― NPR

A dazzling intellectual thriller by a new Japanese literary star . . . stunning ― Financial Times

Breasts and Eggs is stunning - its rage, wry humour and nihilism rendered with real care. It's compelling too, and yet nearly every page gave me reason to pause, realising that some tiny stitch in the fabric of everyday life as a woman had been unceremoniously unpicked -- Olivia Sudjic, author of Sympathy

Incredible and propulsive -- Naoise Dolan

Fierce and sweet and I would like the rest of Kawakami’s work translated, please -- Sarah Moss, author of Summerwater, in The Times

Mieko Kawakami is a writer of rare candour and brilliance -- Rónán Hession, author of Leonard and Hungry Paul

Already a literary sensation . . . Kawakami writes with unsettling precision about the body ― its discomforts, its appetites, its smells and secretions. And she is especially good at capturing its longings, those in this novel being at once obsessive and inchoate, and in one way or another about transformation . . . she regularly drops phrases that made me giddy with pleasure. -- Katie Kitamura ― New York Times

An original and deeply moving novel―that is by turns hilarious, sexy, devastating, and always unforgettable. Breasts and Eggs crackles with provocative insights into the passage of time, friendship, money, and the pleasures and pains of living in a body. I found myself pausing regularly to marvel at Mieko Kawakami’s gift for seeking out the caverns hidden deep within her characters and shining a light there. This book is a gift -- Laura van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel

One of Japan’s brightest stars is set to explode across the global skies of literature . . . Kawakami is both a writer’s writer and an entertainer, a thinker and constantly evolving stylist who manages to be highly readable and immensely popular. ― Japan Times

Mieko Kawakami lobbed a literary grenade into the fusty, male-dominated world of Japanese fiction with 'Chichi to Ran'('Breasts and Eggs') ― Economist

Kawakami is emerging as one of Japan’s most prominent young literary voices, with thoughtfulness and eccentricity at the heart of her prose ― Culture Trip

So finely crafted, every few lines could be a haiku, and you almost forget how difficult it must have been to create something so perfectly simple. And when you notice the clarity, meditativeness, eccentricity, quirk and wit in her writing, you immediately understand how Murakami could be inspired by a writer like this -- Praise for Ms Ice Cream Sandwich ― Ladies Finger

The novel details the lives of three women: the 30-year-old unmarried narrator, her older sister Makiko, who’s obsessed with getting breast implants and her daughter, Midoriko. With humour and compassion, Kawakami explores female oppression in Japan, reproduction rights and motherhood ― Now Magazine

Originally published in Mieko Kawakami’s native Japanese, the author’s stellar 2008 novel Breast and Eggs is being translated to English for the first time ever this month, opening her bold writing up to a wider audience ― Dazed and Confused

Mieko Kawakami is the author of the internationally bestselling novel, Breasts and Eggs, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and one of TIME’s Best 10 Books of 2020. Born in Osaka, Kawakami made her literary debut as a poet in 2006, and published her first novella, My Ego, My Teeth, and the World, in 2007. Her writing is known for its poetic qualities and its insights into the female body, ethical questions, and the dilemmas of modern society. Her works have been translated into many languages and are available all over the world. She has received numerous prestigious literary awards in Japan for her work, including the Akutagawa Prize, the Tanizaki Prize, and the Murasaki Shikibu Prize. She lives in Tokyo, Japan. Heaven is published in 2021.

Sam Bett studied Japanese at UMass-Amherst and Kwansei Gakuin University. Awarded the Grand Prize in the 2016 JLPP International Translation Competition, he has translated fiction by Yoko Ogawa, Yukio Mishima, and Nisio Isin. He is currently co-translating with David Boyd the novels of Mieko Kawakami.

David Boyd is Assistant Professor of Japanese at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is the winner of the 2017/2018 Japan–U.S. Friendship Commission (JUSFC) Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature for his translation of Hideo Furukawa’s Slow Boat (Pushkin Press, 2017). With Sam Bett, he is currently co-translating the novels of Mieko Kawakami.