Parade

"On a summer afternoon, Tsukiko & her former high school teacher have prepared & eaten somen noodles together. “Tell me a story from long ago,” Sensei says. “I wasn’t alive long ago,” Tsukiko says, “but should I tell you a story from when I was little?” “Please do,” Sensei replies, & so Tsukiko tells him that, when she was a child, she awakened one day to find something with a pale red face & something with a dark red face in her room, arguing with each other. 

They had human bodies, long noses, & wings. They were tengu, creatures that appear in Japanese folktales. The tengu attach themselves to Tsukiko & begin to follow her everywhere. Where did they come from & why are they here? And what other invisible & unacknowledged forces are acting upon Tsukiko’s seemingly peaceful world?"

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Hiromi Kawakami was born in Tokyo in 1958. Her first book, God (Kamisama) was published in 1994. In 1996, she was awarded the Akutagawa Prize for Tread on a Snake (Hebi o fumu), & in 2001 she won the Tanizaki Prize for her novel Strange Weather in Tokyo (Sensei no kaban), which was an international bestseller. The book was short-listed for the 2012 Man Asian Literary Prize & the 2014 International Foreign Fiction Prize.

Allison Markin Powell has been awarded grants from English PEN & the NEA, & the 2020 PEN America Translation Prize for The Ten Loves of Nishino by Hiromi Kawakaami. Her other translations include works by Osamu Dazai, Kanako Nishi, & Fuminori Nakamura. She was the guest editor for the first Japan issue of Words Without Borders, served as cochair of the PEN America Translation Committee & currently represents the committee on PEN’s Board of Trustees, & she maintains the database Japanese Literature in English.