Slow Boat

A startling novella from the heir to Haruki Murakami and Gabriel García Márquez: one of the newly designed reissues of Pushkin's first Japanese novella series __________ 'Translator David Boyd brings the slight and endearing story into riffing, confessional English' Wall Street Journal 'The story is elegant and compressed, an investigation into memory, its faults and the arbitrary markers that we set down to locate ourselves, and to form our perspective on the present' TLS 'In this refreshing book, Furukawa proves to be an imaginative and captivating storyteller' Publishers Weekly __________ Boku has an uneasy preoccupation with dreams - and with making and losing lovers. And when he first runs away from Tokyo, his dreams and his reality gradually start to shift and overlap. This is a story of three failed escapes - and the loss of three girlfriends in the process. The first girlfriend is taken away, the second runs away, and the third is sent away by Boku himself. A startling tale about the anguished battle to escape oneself, this structurally complex and fascinating novella is both a homage to Haruki Murakami and a stunning piece of magical realism.

Hideo Furukawa, born in 1966, is an acclaimed and prize-winning writer, hailed by many in Japan's literary world as a prodigy worthy of inheriting the mantle of Haruki Murakami. He was awarded the Mishima Prize in 2006 for Love. His best-known novel is the 2008 Holy Family, an epic work of alternate history set in north-eastern Japan, where he was born.