{"product_id":"record-of-a-night-too-brief-isbn-9781805331407","title":"Record of a Night Too Brief","description":"\u003cb\u003e“Evocative... Astonishing, strange, and wonderful” – \u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews \u003c\/i\u003e(starred review)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA trio of surreal, dazzlingly imaginative short stories set in contemporary Japan that explore desire and loss, talking animals, and odd disappearances \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSensual, yearning, and filled with the tricks of memory and grief, from the celebrated author of \u003ci\u003eStrange Weather in Tokyo\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn these 3 haunting and lyrical stories, young women experience loss, loneliness, and extraordinary romance.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe nightingale sang again. The plates on the table gleamed, and the food, in all its ceaseless variety, breathed, glossy and bright. The night had only just begun.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA woman travels through an unending night with a porcelain girlfriend, monsters of the mist and a monkey who shows no mercy. A sister mourns her brother, who is visible only to her, while her family welcome his would-be wife into their home. One morning, a woman treads on a snake in the park. She comes home that evening and realises the snake has moved into her house and is saying she is her mother…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWinner of the Akutagawa Prize, Japan’s most prestigious literary award, the 3 stories in this collection:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e    Record of a Night Too Brief\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e    Missing\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e    A Snake Stepped On\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003ereveal a highly surreal, meticulously crafted exploration of the many facets of desire, loss and fantasy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePart of Pushkin’s Japanese Novella series: stylishly designed editions of the best of contemporary Japanese fiction, featuring celebrated, prize-winning authors including Mieko Kawakami, Hideo Furukawa, Kaori Fujino and Natsuko Imamura.\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e Record of a Night Too Brief\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e Missing\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e A Snake Stepped On\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\u003cb\u003eHiromi Kawakami\u003c\/b\u003e was born in Tokyo in 1958. Since the publication of \u003ci\u003eGod\u003c\/i\u003e in 1994, she has written numerous novels and collections of short stories, including \u003ci\u003eStrange Weather in Tokyo\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Nakano Thrift Shop\u003c\/i\u003e. Her most recent novel, \u003ci\u003eRunning Water\u003c\/i\u003e, was published in Japan in 2014 and won the Yomiuri Prize for Literature. Hiromi Kawakami has previously been awarded the Akutagawa Prize and the Tanizaki Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2013 Man Asian Literary Prize and the 2014 \u003ci\u003eIndependent\u003c\/i\u003e Foreign Fiction Prize. Her work has been published in more than twenty languages.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLucy North\u003c\/b\u003e is a British translator of Japanese fiction and non-fiction. She has translated Taeko Kono, Hiromi Kawakami, Fumiko Enchi, and Hiroko Oyamada, among others.RECORD OF A  \u003cb\u003eNIGHT TOO BRIEF\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e 1            Horse  \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e What was that itch on my back? I wondered. And then I realized that it was the night—the night was nibbling into me.\u003cbr\u003e It wasn’t that late, still only twilight, but the darkness seemed to have collected just above my shoulders. A black clump of it had fastened onto me, eating away at my back. I wriggled, trying to shake it off, but the night clung fast. When I tried to rip it off with my hands, it floated away, as vapour, and I couldn’t grasp it. I grabbed at a patch, where it was most intensely black, but immediately it dispersed, and another black patch swirled up some-\u003cbr\u003e where else.\u003cbr\u003e The itchiness became unbearable. I scratched frantic- ally. The more I scratched, the more the darkness ate into my back, and the more the darkness ate into my back, the more I itched.\u003cbr\u003e Unable to stand still, I broke into a run.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Immediately, I was running as fast as a horse. I thought, as I ran: you get faster when the night starts eating into you. Roads, pedestrians, signs, all fly by, retreating into the distance, like scenes through a train window.\u003cbr\u003e After a minute or two I grew sick of running, so I stopped. My body was giving off steam like a horse. I was breathing loudly through my nose. Some of the darkness merged with the steam, producing swirling, hazy eddies.\u003cbr\u003e People, standing at a distance, stared.\u003cbr\u003e The darkness mixed with the breaths I was taking in, reappearing when I breathed out, floating in long trails. When I inhaled, the dark trails near my nostrils were sucked back in. When I exhaled again, they were longer than before. The darkness grew, stretching out like endless ribbons, issuing forth from my nostrils.\u003cbr\u003e “That’s a sight you don’t see every day,” an onlooker exclaimed, and then clapped, purposefully, as if summoning koi to the surface of a pond. The other onlookers clapped too, in just the same way.\u003cbr\u003e I grew irritated. “Get the fuck outta here!” I tried to shout. But no words emerged from my mouth. I couldn’t get the first consonant out. Straining, blowing through my nostrils, bearing down, I tried for that first sound: “G— G— G—” But\u003cbr\u003e all I could manage was to snort and blow out air.\u003cbr\u003e The onlookers were delighted, and clapped some more. This infuriated me. I leapt into the air, trying to yell at them, but all that came out was a whinny—like I was a horse. I kept leaping. Landing on a roof, I whinnied again—and\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e then again. The onlookers below were all clapping. I wasn’t going to be outdone by them, and I kept whinnying. By now I had acquired a horse’s body, and was covered with a thick black coat of hair.\u003cbr\u003e “Night’s coming. The Night Horse has arrived,” an onlooker said—the first in the crowd to have clapped. At that moment the steam started to rise in clouds off my body. More darkness: spreading, covering everything.\u003cbr\u003e Elated now, I whinnied over and over again. With every whinny, the darkness became blacker and more intense.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e 2                Chaos  \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e While I was walking, the number of people increased. We were all going in the same direction. I walked, swept along in the flow.\u003cbr\u003e It was after dusk, an hour closer to night. I could see the outlines of people walking just ahead of me, but couldn’t tell the colour of their clothes. A lamplighter approached, holding a long pole, pushing his way against the stream of people. Raising the pole up to a lamp, he let it rest there a few seconds, and the lamp started to glow. Looking around, I realized that there were several lamplighters: everywhere about me, one street lamp after another started to give out a steady light.\u003cbr\u003e Now there were even more people walking, and it was difficult keeping up the pace.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Are you going too?”\u003cbr\u003e I glanced over my shoulder, and saw a slender girl with short hair walking behind me.\u003cbr\u003e “I was thinking about it…,” I answered, without quite committing myself.\u003cbr\u003e Hearing this, the girl, who didn’t stop walking, removed an envelope from her satchel, and opened it, all the while keeping pace with the stream of people.\u003cbr\u003e In the envelope were some green tickets.\u003cbr\u003e “I have an extra. You take it,” she said, as she quickly slipped the green ticket into my pocket. I was going to thank her—but she waved me off and pointed at the people behind us. Some kind of hitch had stopped the flow of people, and there was a pile-up. Knots of people were starting to form, and as more people kept coming from behind them, soon some of the knots were getting pushed up into the air, on top of the knots of people below them.\u003cbr\u003e Quickly I turned to face forward again, and started to walk. A long gap had opened up between us and the people in front of us. Thinking I ought to catch up with them, I broke into a run. But again the girl stopped me.\u003cbr\u003e “Don’t run, or we’ll have chaos. It’s too early. Too early.”\u003cbr\u003e I didn’t understand what she was referring to, but in any case I resumed walking.\u003cbr\u003e We seemed to be approaching a termination point. The stream of people was spreading out. Just ahead, something very tall was rising up to the sky.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Several dozen ticket collectors stood in a row, and once we passed through, showing our tickets, the tall object came into better view.\u003cbr\u003e It was a singer, who stood as tall as a three-storey build- ing. From where I was, I had a clear view of the beauty spot under her jaw, and the rise and fall of her breasts.\u003cbr\u003e “The beauty spot is artificial,” the girl informed me, gazing up at the singer, enraptured.\u003cbr\u003e The singer was producing notes at different pitches, as if she were warming up. When she sang high notes, flocks of birds took flight from the branches of the gingko trees. When she sang low notes, the earth heaved, and small furry creatures emerged from underground and crawled about.\u003cbr\u003e When the square was packed with people, suddenly, with no warning, the singer commenced singing. It was as if an immense musical instrument was filling the firmament with sound, or as if the melody of her song was swimming through the skies… In the next moment her voice had overwhelmed all else, and rather than listening, we seemed to be encompassed within it. No longer able to know the words, we were conscious only that her lilting voice was, slowly and powerfully, all around us.\u003cbr\u003e The crowd of people, filled with her music, started to break up and form lines, which began to flow from the square in every direction, like innumerable streams flow- ing from a lake.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “The chaos has started,” the girl said to me, joining a stream of people going by her. I watched as she was borne away.\u003cbr\u003e I joined the same stream of people, and pretty soon caught up with her.\u003cbr\u003e “Where are we going?” I enquired. The girl nodded sev- eral times, her eyes closed, looking unworried.\u003cbr\u003e “Where?” I asked again. “The night,” she replied.\u003cbr\u003e With that, her head tilted downwards, and she fell into a deep sleep. She was carried along as she slept.\u003cbr\u003e Now a part of the chaos, alongside the girl, I entered the night.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e 3                Gentlemen  \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I ascended the stairs and found a door, which I opened to a banquet in full swing.\u003cbr\u003e An array of gentlemen, each of them dressed in white, was seated at a table, eating and drinking. On the table were platters of raw seafood—sea urchin, halibut, scallops, clams, sea bream, flounder, silver trevally, tuna, squid, octopus, smelt—as well as an assortment of meat and veg- etable dishes—broiled, boiled, fried. The gentlemen were savouring each dish.\u003cbr\u003e I could hear them having little disagreements, in the soft-spoken manner befitting gentlemen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “This part, just here. \u003ci\u003eSo \u003c\/i\u003esucculent! Such \u003ci\u003eflavour\u003c\/i\u003e!”\u003cbr\u003e “Oh, but it shouldn’t be soft. When it’s utterly fresh, it’s springy and firm. That’s the whole point.”\u003cbr\u003e “So the divers have to gather it up from the seabed in the early hours.”\u003cbr\u003e “That’s what makes it such a luxury.”\u003cbr\u003e The food looked so mouth-wateringly delicious, I swal- lowed loudly, despite myself.\u003cbr\u003e The gentlemen, unaware of my presence, turned and trained their gaze on me.\u003cbr\u003e “Who do we have here? A traveller, perhaps, from a distant land?”\u003cbr\u003e “A visitor.”\u003cbr\u003e “We don’t often get visitors.”\u003cbr\u003e “We should mark the occasion!”\u003cbr\u003e They all rose from the table. The gentleman at the head placed his napkin on his chair and approached me, his arms open.\u003cbr\u003e “So good of you to come!” he said.\u003cbr\u003e And the others, who’d followed his lead placing their napkins on their chairs and greeting me, added their chorus of welcomes.\u003cbr\u003e I was shown to a seat midway along the table, a napkin was tucked in at my collar, and a gleaming knife and fork placed beside me.\u003cbr\u003e “Please, eat.”\u003cbr\u003e “Please feel free, have whatever you like.”\u003cbr\u003e The gentlemen took their seats at the table. The gentlemen\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e on my right turned to the left, and the gentlemen on my left turned to the right. Two lines of faces, on both sides of the table, their eyes all fixed on the same point, receded into the distance on either side of me, like two lines of layered images.\u003cbr\u003e “Please try the flounder. It’s out of this world.”\u003cbr\u003e “And the cooked dishes—the stir-fried chicken with chilli peppers.”\u003cbr\u003e “Or the pig’s liver \u003ci\u003egayettes\u003c\/i\u003e.”\u003cbr\u003e “If you’d prefer a dish with green curry, we’ll have it prepared specially.”\u003cbr\u003e With all this encouragement, I was unable to decide. My fork hovered over the dishes. The gentlemen fixed their gaze, their eyes wide, on the end of my fork. They seemed almost to be drooling.\u003cbr\u003e I stuck the fork into something that looked like meat, I wasn’t sure what kind, on a plate near me.\u003cbr\u003e A sigh rose up from the company. “Ahh!”\u003cbr\u003e “Would you expect less from a guest from a distant land?” “Such a discriminating palate!”\u003cbr\u003e I cut the meat, or whatever it was, and ate it, piece by tiny piece. But I couldn’t taste it.\u003cbr\u003e “What’ll she go for now, I wonder?”\u003cbr\u003e “Come now, no more comments. Leave her to enjoy it.”\u003cbr\u003e I continued to eat. With every bite, sighs and cries of joy and muffled surprise rose up, and I became even less able to taste what I was eating.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e I had now eaten my fill, so I laid down my knife and fork. But the gentlemen glared at me.\u003cbr\u003e “Our guest eats surprisingly little.” “She’s probably just having a rest.”\u003cbr\u003e “She couldn’t possibly want to stop eating yet.”\u003cbr\u003e Embarrassed, I resumed eating. My stomach was so full I thought it might burst, but still I ate. I ate till nearly everything on the table was gone. I sighed in relief, thinking I was done, when one of the gentlemen rang a bell, which made a little tinkling sound.\u003cbr\u003e A butler appeared, bringing out platters with dome-like silver dish covers.\u003cbr\u003e “Our guest is fortunate!”\u003cbr\u003e “Fortunate to be able to enjoy such a rare feast!”\u003cbr\u003e “She can eat her fill, whatever she likes, until dawn breaks!”\u003cbr\u003e I really felt that I could not force down another morsel. But the gentlemen were all staring at me sternly, even as they smiled.\u003cbr\u003e Outside a nightingale started to sing in a high voice.\u003cbr\u003e Please, I can’t eat anything more, I wanted to say, but I couldn’t.\u003cbr\u003e The nightingale sang again. The plates on the table gleamed, and the food, in all its ceaseless variety, breathed, glossy and bright.\u003cbr\u003e The night had only just begun.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e ","brand":"Pushkin Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302350967013,"sku":"NP9781805331407","price":15.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781805331407.jpg?v=1767735527","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/record-of-a-night-too-brief-isbn-9781805331407","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}