People from My Neigh­borhood delivers a heartfelt, beautiful, dreamlike rendition of urban life that is both glorious on its own merits and will emotionally resonate with those of us who, due to the pandemic, have been required to stay at home, kept at arms lengths from our fam­ily, friends, and community.”—Ian Mond, Locus

We get a story dedicated to her older sister (a truly creepy tale of cruel sisterly abuse which ends on the image of what a doll’s brains might look like) before Kanae herself is fleshed out more thoroughly in “The Juvenile Delinquent”.

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The publisher describes People from My Neighborhood as “super short ‘palm of the hand’” stories, a phrase coined by Japanese Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata. Kawakami’s is a book to keep on hand and to become intimate with: a book with which readers can have a relationship of their own. Turns out that some people are hatched from eggs, and they're not real humans. The narrator learns this from an local doctor. Twenty-six tightly drawn narratives that feature Kawakami’s signature unsparing and clever prose . . . An offbeat and energetic look at the magical and mysterious elements that can arise in the most normal circumstances." —Annabel Gutterman, TIME People from My Neighbourhood isn’t just an exercise in home-town nostalgia, though. The stories occasionally go off in other directions, with some even shooting us into the future. One example features an estate on the outskirts of town, where most apartments contain exactly six people – all well and good. Then the story develops in an unusual manner: The town grew more and more run down as time passed, but the estate thrived. It seceded from Japan and formed its own armed forces, which sometimes held manoeuvres in Tokyo Bay.

Japanese author Hiromi Kawakami is one of her country’s most popular contemporary novelists. She was made famous worldwide for her book Strange Weather in Tokyo (2013), which was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. In addition, Kawakami is known for her absurdist writing style, which permeates the stylistic atmosphere in People From my Neighborhood (2020). With the extraordinary effort of translator Ted Goossen, Kawakami’s unearthly charm and surrealist dreamscapes are now available for English-reading audiences to journey within. Hiromi Kawakami collects here a dreamlike conglomeration of semi-related characters and events from her part of town, if the title and interior clues are to be believed.Like with her previous works in English, her subdued storytelling is softer than Yoko Ogawa's and the spheres from which she draws her subject matter are not as far-flung as Yoko Tawada's, but any of her books are approachable, somewhat enjoyable, and similar in feel to Banana Yoshimoto's. The Elf: about a Music House that located next to the park which you could only visit during your birthday. It plays music to visitors but no one ever tell details about their experience. "Everyone hears different music. The music that rules their destiny." So mysteriously captivating.