Toddler Hunting: And Other Stories Format: Paperback

Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2018

An unforgettable collection of stories from “the most carnally direct and the most lucidly intelligent woman writing in Japan” (Kenzaburo Oe)

Toddler-Hunting and Other Stories introduces a startlingly original voice. Winner of Japan’s top literary prizes for fiction (among them the Akutagawa, the Tanizaki, the Noma, and the Yomiuri), Taeko Kono writes with a strange beauty, pinpricked with sadomasochistic and disquieting scenes.

In the title story, the protagonist loathes young girls, but compulsively buys expensive clothes for little boys so that she can watch them dress and undress. The impersonal gaze Taeko Kono turns on this behavior transfixes the reader with a fatal question: What are we hunting for? And why?

Multiplying perspectives and refracting light from the strangely facing mirrors of fantasy and reality, pain and pleasure, these ten stories present Kono at her very best.

Born in Tokyo, Taeko Kono (1926–2015) was “one of the most significant feminist writers of postwar Japan” (Japan Times).

Lucy North has translated Japanese fiction and non-fiction, including by Taeko Kono, Hiromi Kawakami, Fumiko Enchi, and Natsuko Imamura. Born in Tokyo and raised in Los Angeles, Yuki Tejima is the translator of works by Mizuki Tsujimura, Emi Yagi, Kumi Kimura, and Risa Wataya, among others.