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Shop nowLife Ceremony
Stories
Translator
Ginny Tapley Takemori
Length
5 hours 54 minutes
Language
English
Narrators
Natalie Naudus, Eunice Wong, Pun Bandhu, various narrators, Emily Woo Zeller, Jeena Yi & Nancy Wu
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreThe long-awaited first short story-collection by the author of the cult sensation Convenience Store Woman, tales of weird love, heartfelt friendships, and the unsettling nature of human existence
With Life Ceremony, the incomparable Sayaka Murata is back with her first collection of short stories ever to be translated into English. In Japan, Murata is particularly admired for her short stories, which are sometimes sweet, sometimes shocking, and always imbued with an otherworldly imagination and uncanniness.
In these twelve stories, Murata mixes an unusual cocktail of humor and horror to portray both the loners and outcasts as well as turning the norms and traditions of society on their head to better question them. Whether the stories take place in modern-day Japan, the future, or an alternate reality is left to the reader’s interpretation, as the characters often seem strange in their normality in a frighteningly abnormal world.
In “A First-Rate Material,” Nana and Naoki are happily engaged, but Naoki can’t stand the conventional use of deceased people’s bodies for clothing, accessories, and furniture, and a disagreement around this threatens to derail their perfect wedding day.
“Lovers on the Breeze” is told from the perspective of a curtain in a child’s bedroom that jealously watches the young girl Naoko as she has her first kiss with a boy from her class and does its best to stop her.
“Eating the City” explores the strange norms around food and foraging, while “Hatchling” closes the collection with an extraordinary depiction of the fractured personality of someone who tries too hard to fit in.
In these strange and wonderful stories of family and friendship, sex and intimacy, belonging and individuality, Murata asks above all what it means to be a human in our world and offers answers that surprise and linger.
Sayaka Murata is the author of many books, including Earthlings and Convenience Store Woman, winner of the Akutagawa Prize. Murata has been named a Freeman’s “Future of New Writing” author and a Vogue Japan Woman of the Year.
Natalie Naudus is a Taiwanese American actor who started out as an opera singer, with a Master of Music from the University of North Texas. She has a passion for stories and characters, and her language training has allowed her to develop a skill for accents and convincing foreign language dialogue. She excels at unique character voices and passionate storytelling. She lives in Virginia with her husband and two daughters.
Eunice Wong is an award-winning, Juilliard-trained actor who works in professional theatres across the United States and in New York City.
Emily Woo Zeller is an Earphones award-winning audiobook narrator. After beginning her voiceover career with Asian animation, she returned to the United States and began narrating a broad spectrum of audiobook genres. Her multilingual, multicultural framework brings a particularly unique, clear-eyed, and intimate perspective to the Asian American narratives she specializes in.
Nancy Wu is an award-winning narrator who has worked in animation, television, theater, and film. Having lived and recorded all over the world, she is known for her vivid action/fantasy characters, accents, and bringing literature and nonfiction equally to life. A graduate of Amherst College with her master's degree in human rights, she is an avid Ashtanga yoga practitioner and rock climber. Born and raised in West Virginia, she currently resides in Boulder, Colorado.
Ginny Tapley Takemori has translated works by more than a dozen Japanese writers, including Ryu Murakami. She was awarded the 2020 –21 Lindsley and Masao Miyoshi Translation Prize for Convenience Store Woman.
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Reviews
“Murata’s writing…expertly captur[es] the fragility of social norms and calling into question what remains of human nature once they’re stripped away.”
“Cast members read these tales in distinct and absorbing voices that make the author’s eerily astute social observation real for all of us.”
“Murata is interested in how disgust drives ethics, in why some things repel us but not others.”
“Twelve engrossing entries that probe intimacy and individuality while turning norms upside down.”
“These macabre stories are suffused with a tender compassion for the foibles of their characters.”
“A close focus on characters, nearly always women, who do not conform to social expectations…makes the stories strangely believable, easy to read, and hard to forget.”
“Murata confronts unspeakable topics with quotidian calm, shockingly convincing logic, and creepy humor in a dozen genre-defying stories.”
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