Yoko Ogawa
A mother buying strawberry cakes for her son who died years ago. An old lady harvesting strangely shaped carrots from the field where she buried her husband. A lost woman stumbling into a museum of torture. A Bengal tiger dying in the arms of his caretaker. A mistress killing her lover when he doesn’t want to leave his wife…
This is a collection of 11 dark tales that are all connected with each other, and center around death. Together, they create a tapestry of connections between characters, showing how much our lives intersect and how we are influenced by the people surrounding us, whether we know them or not.
Yoko Ogawa was born in 1962, studied at Waseda university, and became a medical university secretary. After her marriage, unbeknownst to her husband, she began writing. She won the Kaien Literary Prize for her debut novel in 1988, and has since written more than 50 works. She has also won many prestigious literary prizes, among them all major Japanese prizes, as well as international awards.
Ogawa skilfully connects the stories through characters and places, but the reader has to do some work to see this. Give it a try and get the book from amazon.