From the author of A Woman of Pleasure comes a powerful new novel that sharply criticizes our modern attachment to our possessions, and specifically our land, from the perspective of two singular women who refuse to leave their home

A small island near the Japanese border which once had a thriving fishing industry is now home to just two old women: 92-year-old Io and 88-year-old Someko. As we see them grow their vegetables and catch their fish, it seems at first that they are self-sufficient, but the cost of deliveries from the boat supplying them with propane and other necessities is 200,000 dollars a year. Still, the village officer wants them to keep on living there to prevent border violations.

The last surviving women are in fact saving Japan from invasion by a neighboring country. Occasionally Io's daughter Umiko visits the island, trying to convince them to move to the mainland for their safety. Yet the two women pay no attention. They have a bigger mission than their safety-to become birds. They believe that their husbands and brother who failed to return from the ocean have morphed into birds, and they are preparing to meet the same fate. A novel about the rigors of time and connection to place buoyed by a deep love and attachment to family.

KIYOKO MURATA is the author of A Woman of Pleasure. She has been awarded many of Japan's major literary awards including the Akutagawa Prize in 1987. [Hizoku] won the Tanizaki Prize in 2019. She lives in Fukuoka, Japan.

Translator:
JULIET WINTERS CARPENTER was a distinguished translator of Japanese literature whose work received numerous awards. She lived in Japan for over forty-five years, then on Whidbey Island in Washington State. She died in 2026.