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Izumi Suzuki had ideas about doing things differently, ideas that paid little attention to the laws of physics, or the laws of the land. In this new collection, her skewed imagination distorts and enhances some of the classic concepts of science fiction and fantasy.
A philandering husband receives a bestial punishment from a wife with her own secrets to keep; a music lover finds herself in a timeline both familiar and as wrong as can be; idle high school students find adventure in another dimension but aren't all that impressed; a misfit band of space pirates discover a mysterious baby among the stars; Emma, the Bovary-like character from one of Suzuki's stories in Terminal Boredom, lands herself in a bizarre romantic pickle.
Wryly anarchic and deeply imaginative, Suzuki was a writer like no other. These eleven stories offer listeners the opportunity to delve deeper in this singular writer's work.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
April 25, 2023 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9798350802276
- File size: 203734 KB
- Duration: 07:04:26
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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January 2, 2023
With this impressive collection, translators Bett, David Boyd, Helen O’Horan, and Daniel Joseph bring 11 strange, transfixing, and compassionate short stories from Suzuki (1949–1986) to English-speaking audiences. Suzuki has a real sympathy for the alien and the marginalized—especially young girls and women confused or constrained by societal expectations of female sexuality—and tends to end each story with a bizarre yet fascinating twist. Standouts include “Trial Witch,” wherein a housewife uses her newly granted magical powers to teach her abusive husband a lesson, and “Hey, It’s a Love Psychedelic!” a metafictional forerunner of the cyberpunk genre about a former music groupie discovering a warp in her timeline after Tokyo’s Triangle Building gets filled with salmon roe and eaten like sushi. Readers should be aware of a running thread of fatphobia that does not age well, but the quirky sci-fi concepts and some delightful turns of phrase (a self-centered man is described as “an ad for himself on an infinite loop”) mean these tales largely hold up quite well. SFF fans are sure to be pleased with these slangy, accessible new translations of a master.
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