Akutagawa Prize-winning stories about unsettling loss and romance from one of Japan’s most celebrated contemporary writers—for fans of Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto

In a dreamlike adventure, one woman travels through an apparently unending night with a porcelain girlfriend, mist-monsters and villainous monkeys; a sister mourns her invisible brother whom only she can still see, while the rest of her family welcome his would-be wife into their home; and an accident with a snake leads a shop girl to discover the snake-families everyone else seems to be concealing.

Sensual, yearning, and filled with the tricks of memory and grief, Record of a Night Too Brief is an atmospheric trio of unforgettable tales.


“Talking animals, transformations into trees and horses, and a melancholic mood of loss and love make it easy to see why Kawakami is one of the more exciting voices in contemporary Japanese literature." —Thrillist