The Place of Shells

<p><b>WINNER OF THE AKUTAGAWA PRIZE</b><br><br><b>'</b><b>A hypnotic dissection of memory, trauma and belonging'</b><br><i>New Statesman</i><br><br><b>'This attempt to imprint upon humanity the experiences of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in a way that only a novel can achieve deserves to be highly esteemed'</b><br>Yoko Ogawa, author of <i>The Memory Police</i><br><br><b>'Here we find a form of language that attempts to venture, dancing, into a past enveloped in silence'</b><br>Yoko Tawada, author of <i>The Last Children of Tokyo</i><br><br><b>'An eerie, shimmering fever dream . . . strange and beautiful'</b><br>Jenny Mustard, author of <i>Okay Days</i><br><br>In the summer of 2020, as Germany slowly emerges from lockdown, a young Japanese woman studying in Gottingen waits at the train station to meet an old friend. Nomiya died a decade earlier in the Tohoku tsunami, but he has suddenly returned without any explanation.<br><br>The reunited friends share a past that's a world away from the tranquillity of Gottingen. Yet Nomiya's spectral presence destabilises something in the city: mysterious guests appear, eerie discoveries are made in the forest and, as the past becomes increasingly vivid, the threads of time threaten to unravel.<br><br>With a literary style reminiscent of W. G. Sebald, Yoko Tawada, and Yu Miri, <i>The Place of Shells </i>is an astounding exploration of the strange orbits of memory and the haunting presence of the past.</p>