Earthlings

Praise for Earthlings : “I loved this book! It easily converted me to being an alien. A radical, hilarious, heartbreaking look at the crap we have all internalized in order to fit in and survive.” —Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot “ Earthlings takes the mood of colorful disquiet she honed in Convenience Store Woman and pushes it further out. The boy and a girl at the heart of her latest believe they have landed on earth from outer space. Raised by separate families, treated badly, they tack toward each other in this immensely charming, strange and heart-stomping tale. The imagination of this writer grows and grows like outer space. Earthlings should be one of the main fictional events of 2020.” —John Freeman, Literary Hub “From the author of 2018’s comic gem about a Japanese misfit, Convenience Store Woman , a new novel featuring a young woman who is convinced she is an alien.” — Guardian “This is one that should be on everyone’s wish list.” — Japan Times “In 2020, we finally get our hands on Sayaka Murata’s newest novel . . . A new statement by Murata that finding your own freedom is a struggle against family and society which takes sacrifice.” — Books and Bao Praise for Convenience Store Woman : “Keiko, a defiantly oddball 36-year-old woman, has worked in a dead-end job as a convenience store cashier in Tokyo for half her life. She lives alone and has never been in a romantic relationship, or even had sex. And she is perfectly happy with all of it . . . Written in plain-spoken prose, the slim volume focuses on a character who in many ways personifies a demographic panic in Japan.” —Motoko Rich, New York Times (profile) “A small, elegant and deadpan novel . . . Casts a fluorescent spell . . . A thrifty and offbeat exploration of what we must each leave behind to participate in the world.” —Dwight Garner, New York Times “Alienation gets deliciously perverse treatment in Convenience Store Woman . . . The book’s true brilliance lies in Murata’s way of subverting our expectations . . . With bracing good humor . . . Murata celebrate[s] the quiet heroism of women who accept the cost of being themselves.” —John Powers, NPR’s Fresh Air “The novel borrows from Gothic romance, in its pairing of the human and the alluringly, dangerously not. It is a love story, in other words, about a misfit and a store . . . Keiko’s self-renunciations reveal the book to be a kind of grim post-capitalist reverie: she is an anti-Bartleby, abandoning any shred of identity outside of her work . . . Tranquil—dreamy, even—rooting for its employee-store romance from the bottom of its synthetic heart.” —Katy Waldman, New Yorker “An exhilaratingly weird and funny Japanese novel about a long-term convenience store employee. Unsettling and totally unpredictable—my copy is now heavily underlined.” —Sally Rooney, Guardian “As intoxicating as a sake mojito . . . A literary prize-winner that’s also a page-turner.” —John Powers, Vogue “It’s the novel’s cumulative, idiosyncratic poetry that lingers, attaining a weird, fluorescent kind of beauty all of its own.” —Julie Myerson, Guardian “Brilliant, witty, and sweet in ways that recall Amélie and Shopgirl . . . Murata’s sparkly writing and knack for odd, beautiful details are totally her own.” — Vogue , “13 Books to Thrill, Entertain, and Sustain You This Summer” “A quiet masterpiece . . . Seldom has a narrator been so true to a lack of self, and so triumphantly other.” —David Wright, Seattle Times “A spare, quietly brilliant novel . . . Like being lulled into a soft calm.” —Arianna Rebolini, BuzzFeed “This magical little book performs this neat accordion track in sentences so clean and crisp it’s like they were laminated and placed before you, one at a time, in a well-windex’d cooler . . . The 7-11 Madame Bovary .” —John Freeman, Literary Hub “A personal favorite . . . The prose is as crisp as is the aesthetic of [Japan]” —Lauren Christensen, CBS This Morning “Knock-you-off-your-feet good, sucking you wholesale into the strange brain of its narrator . . . Like being beamed down onto a foreign planet, which turns out to be your own . . . May we buy out bookstores’ stocks of Convenience Store Woman , and yell Sayaka Murata’s name from the rooftops.” —Alison Tate Lewis, Electric Literature “A novel that proves sylphlike; spare in its contents, with a masterfully deceptive comic veneer that keeps the reader turning the page.” — Zyzzyva “Quirky, memorable.” — Times (UK) “Engaging . . . A sure-fire hit of the summer.” — Irish Times “Smart and sly . . . Moving, funny, and unsettling.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Dazzling.” — Booklist (starred review) “A unique and unexpectedly revealing English language debut.” — Kirkus Reviews “A gem of a book. Quirky, deadpan, poignant, and quietly profound, it is a gift to anyone who has ever felt at odds with the world—and if we were truly being honest, I suspect that would be most of us.” —Ruth Ozeki, author of A Tale for the Time Being “What a weird and wonderful and deeply satisfying book this is. Sayaka Murata is an utterly unique and revolutionary voice. I tore through Convenience Store Woman[/i] with great delight.” —Jami Attenberg, New York Times bestselling author of The Middlesteins and All Grown Up “A darkly comic, deeply unsettling examination of contemporary life, of alienation, of capitalism, of identity, of conformity. We’ve all been to this convenience store, whether it’s in Japan or somewhere else.” —Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer “This is a story about what’s normal and not, a drama played on a stage so violently plain it becomes as vivid and surprising as an alien planet. I loved Convenience Store Woman: its brevity, its details, its opinions about life.” —Robin Sloan, author of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore “I picked up this novel on a trip to Japan and couldn’t put it down. A haunting, dark, and often hilarious take on society’s expectations of the single woman. As an extra bonus, it totally transformed my experience of going to convenience stores in Tokyo.” —Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot “ Convenience Store Woman is a mighty fine book, completely charming. Sayaka Murata is a wonderful writer.” —Rabih Alameddine, author of An Unnecessary Woman “Instructions: Open book. Consume contents. Feel charmed, disturbed, and weirdly in love. Do not discard.” —Jade Chang, author of The Wangs Vs. the World “Murata creates an original and surreal world in the most unlikely places. Furukura, the convenience store woman, is a strange, complex, gripping protagonist who inadvertently propels her own story forth through a series of subtle actions yet it is through these actions and also the spareness of the author’s prose that we see what a master Murata truly is. This book is not only readable, it is fun, thought provoking and at times outrageous and outrageously funny. It is sure to be a standout of the year.” —Weike Wang, author of Chemistry “This novel made me laugh. It was the first time for me to laugh in this way: it was absurd, comical, cute . . . audacious, and precise. It was overwhelming.” —Hiromi Kawakami, author of The Nakano Thrift Shop