When the Museum Is Closed: A Novel

A quirky, joyful, feel-good love story about a lonely museum worker who falls in love with a statue of Venus, from the author of international bestseller Diary of a Void

Rika Horauchi’s new part-time job is to converse with a statue of Venus—in Latin—every Monday, when the museum is closed.

Initially reluctant, Rika starts to enjoy her strange new job. Recommended by her old university professor for her exemplary language skills, Rika leads an otherwise unassuming life, working the rest of the week in a frozen-food warehouse. As Venus comes to life in the quiet of the museum, they talk about everything. Venus opens up new worlds for Rika, both intellectually and emotionally. They soon fall in love. But when the museum’s curator, Hashibami, makes it clear he wants to keep Venus for himself, what will Rika do?

When the Museum is Closed is by turns charming, funny and surprising, a surreal take on our most real emotions and concerns: love, loneliness, freedom, perceptions of beauty and how women are seen in society. This uncommonly original new novel confirms Emi Yagi as one of the most exciting Japanese writers published in English today.

EMI YAGI is an editor at a women’s magazine in Japan. She was born in 1988 and lives in Tokyo. Her first novel and international cult hit, Diary of a Void, won the Osamu Dazai Prize, awarded annually to the best debut work of fiction.

YUKI TEJIMA is a translator from the Japanese whose projects include Mizuki Tsujimura’s Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon and How to Hold Someone in Your Heart and Kumi Kimura’s Someone to Watch Over You, among others. Raised in California, she now lives in Tokyo.