Izumi Suzuki

Seven punky and pitch-black stories offer English-language readers an overdue introduction to Izumi Suzuki, a cult figure in Japanese literature. The fissures in a queer matriarchal utopia are exposed when a boy - a creature usually contained in ghettoised isolation - appears beneath young Yūko's window; an extreme government initiative curbing overpopulation prompts a woman to re-evaluate her friendships; the last family in a desolate city learns to be human through the awkward appropriation of popular culture; passive-aggressive furniture provides unwelcome romantic advice; tense interplanetary politics distort Emma's love life; Jane's ex-girlfriend reppears, radically altered and insistent on a catch-up; Tokyo's teenagers, disaffected and numb from excessive screentime, find distraction in violence. Suzuki's singular slant on science fiction remains fresh and essential. Concerns about society, gender and imperialism dovetail irresistibly with flights of speculative wonder. And with a kitchen sink in the corner of even her wildest stories, Suzuki reminds us that while society may be limitless, relationships remain impossible

A new collection of stories from the cult author of Terminal Boredom. 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 readers the opportunity to delve deeper in this singular writer's work.