Dec 19, 2020
As 2021 approaches, six Japan Times book reviewers look back on their top reads released in English this year.
Breasts and Eggs, Fiction, Mieko Kawakami (trans. Sam Bett and David Boyd), Picador, 432 pages
If you missed “Breasts and Eggs,” Mieko Kawakami’s expansive and lively omnibus, put it at the top of your 2021 reading list.
The book is made up of two connected novellas that were combined and translated into English this year, and together the story explores the human condition by examining what it means to be born. No one delves into humanity quite like Kawakami, who adroitly balances social issues with humor and juxtaposes philosophical questions with streetwise answers. Kawakami’s sprawling, soaring, sometimes stumbling prose always rights itself into a sly meditation on human flaws and fallacies, taking on single motherhood, social isolation, gender norms and sexual abuse.