All the Lovers in the Night is a balm for tense nerves, a light in the dark for anyone who has ever felt ashamed, lost, and unlucky in love. In Mieko Kawakami's world, ordinary things become strange and hilarious: a smiling woman looks like a piece of cabbage split "perfectly in two," a person wearing an ear-flapped hat appears at the top of an escalator like "a piece of luggage emerging from the baggage claim." There are very few writers whose work I follow with a religious fervor, and Kawakami is one of them.
— Peter
This is a unique story that tackles the theme of performance. This book shows how society pressures women into being/existing and how they must figure out that minefield. Throughout the novel we see the main character questioning her place in society when she herself doe not quite know why or how to navigate it.
— Stephanie
“I remain in awe of Mieko Kawakami’s ability to take life’s quietest moments and give them weight and vibrancy. The emotional depth of the characters feels tangible and familiar. Her work continues to be nothing short of excellence!”
— Kelsey Jagneaux, Tombolo Books, St. Petersburg, FL
FINALIST for the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction
A BEST BOOK OF 2022
Oprah Daily・TIME Magazine・Washington Post・Publishers Weekly・Lit Hub
Bestselling author of Breasts and Eggs Mieko Kawakami invites readers back into her immediately recognizable fictional world with this new, extraordinary novel and demonstrates yet again why she is one of today's most uncategorizable, insightful, and talented novelists.
Fuyuko Irie is a freelance copy editor in her mid-thirties. Working and living alone in a city where it is not easy to form new relationships, she has little regular contact with anyone other than her editor, Hijiri, a woman of the same age but with a very different disposition. When Fuyuko stops one day on a Tokyo street and notices her reflection in a storefront window, what she sees is a drab, awkward, and spiritless woman who has lacked the strength to change her life and decides to do something about it.
As the long overdue change occurs, however, painful episodes from Fuyuko's past surface and her behavior slips further and further beyond the pale. All the Lovers in the Night is acute and insightful, entertaining and engaging; it will make readers laugh, and it will make them cry, but it will also remind them, as only the best books do, that sometimes the pain is worth it.
"In the skilled hands of Bett and Boyd, Kawakami's prose is instantly recognizable--immediate, incisive, and unfailingly honest."--Katie Kitamura, Entertainment Weekly (A Most Anticipated Book of 2022)