Mild Vertigo

Description

The apparently unremarkable Natsumi lives in a modern Tokyo apartment with her husband and two sons: she does the laundry, goes to the supermarket, visits friends, and gossips with neighbors. Tracing her conversations and interactions with her family and friends as they blend seamlessly into her own infernally buzzing internal monologue, Mild Vertigo explores the dizzying reality of being unable to locate oneself in the endless stream of minutiae that forms a lonely life confined to a middle-class home, where both everything and nothing happens.

With shades of Clarice Lispector, Elena Ferrante, and Kobo Abe, this verbally acrobatic novel by the esteemed novelist, essayist, and critic Mieko Kanai–whose work enjoys a cult status in Japan–is a disconcerting and radically imaginative portrait of selfhood in late-stage capitalist society.

Binding Type: Paperback
Contributors: Mieko Kanai,Polly Barton (Translator),Kate Zambreno (Introduction by)
Published: 05/02/2023
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
ISBN: 9780811232289
Pages: 192
Weight: 0.45lbs
Size: 0.50″ H x 8.00″ L x 5.20″ W

About the Author
Kanai, Mieko: – Born in 1947, Mieko Kanai is a novelist, poet, short-story writer, essayist, and critic. Her novel Mild Vertigo was called “mesmerizing” (The New York Times), “monumental” (Japan Times), and “urgent” (The Atlantic)Barton, Polly: – Polly Barton is a writer and literary translator from the Japanese. Her translations include Butter by Asako Yuzuki and Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa. She has published two works of non-fiction, Fifty Sounds and Porn: An Oral History; What Am I, A Deer? is her debut novel.Zambreno, Kate: – Kate Zambreno is the author of eight books, most recently the novel Drifts and a study of Hervé Guibert, To Write As If Already Dead.