A time-bending story of love, desire, and destiny that sways between Japan’s past and its present—from a courtesan of Yoshiwara in Edo to a serving lady of the Heian period to a wife and mother in the twenty-first century—by one of our most brilliant and sensitive contemporary novelists
Having married her childhood sweetheart, Riko now finds herself trapped in a relationship soured by infidelity. One day, she runs into her old friend Mr Takaoka, who offers friendship, love, and an unusual escape: he teaches her the trick of living inside her dreams.
Now, each night, she sinks into another life: first as a high-ranking courtesan in the seventeenth century, and then as a serving lady to a princess in the late Middle Ages. As she experiences desire and heartbreak in the past, so Riko comes to reconsider her life as a twenty-first-century woman—as a wife, as a mother, and as a lover—and to ask herself whether, after loving her husband and loving Mr Takaoka, she is ready for her third great love.
Time, A Most Anticipated Book of the Fall
"[K]awakami herself invents a narrative language that traverses timelines and dialects, by which a surrealist depiction of a woman’s coming-of-age emerges . . . [W]hat her protagonist discovers reads as radically feminist to me, a way of living that no longer privileges the role of wife over that of friend, daughter, mother, intellectual compatriot, co-conspirator." —Emmeline Clein, The New York Times Book Review
"The Third Love explores the ways identities can shift with various forms of knowledge, and if we're lucky we'll end up more worldly and stronger for it." —Maris Kreizman, The Maris Review
"Weaves historical fiction, Japanese literary icons, and meditations on love into a novel that’s remarkable on many levels." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Thanks to the book’s splendid dreamworlds, it unfolds at the scale of a saga . . . In the mystical, immersive novel The Third Love, heady dreams offer new insights into the waking world." —Meg Nola, Foreword Reviews
"The scintillating latest from Kawakami . . . Readers will be transported." —Publishers Weekly
HIROMI KAWAKAMI was born in Tokyo in 1958. Her first novel, Kamisama (God), was published in 1994. In 1996, she was awarded the Akutagawa Prize for “Hebi o Fumu” (“A Snake Stepped On”), and in 2001, she won the Tanizaki Prize for her novel Sensei no Kaban (Strange Weather in Tokyo), which became an international bestseller. Strange Weather in Tokyo was short-listed for the 2013 Man Asian Literary Prize and the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Kawakami has contributed to editions of Granta in both the U.K. and Japan and is one of Japan’s most popular contemporary novelists. Her previous novel in English translation, Under the Eye of the Big Bird, was short-listed for the International Booker Prize.
TED GOOSSEN taught Japanese literature and film at York University in Toronto. He is the general editor of The Oxford Book of Short Stories, the co-editor of the literary journal Monkey, and has published translations of Hiromi Kawakami, Yoko Ogawa and Naoya Shiga, among others. He translated Haruki Murakami’s Wind/Pinball and The Strange Library, and co-translated (with Philip Gabriel) Men Without Women and Killing Commendatore.
A time-bending story of love, desire, and destiny that sways between Japan’s past and its present—from a courtesan of Yoshiwara in Edo to a serving lady of the Heian period to a wife and mother in the twenty-first century—by one of our most brilliant and sensitive contemporary novelists
Having married her childhood sweetheart, Riko now finds herself trapped in a relationship soured by infidelity. One day, she runs into her old friend Mr Takaoka, who offers friendship, love, and an unusual escape: he teaches her the trick of living inside her dreams.
Now, each night, she sinks into another life: first as a high-ranking courtesan in the seventeenth century, and then as a serving lady to a princess in the late Middle Ages. As she experiences desire and heartbreak in the past, so Riko comes to reconsider her life as a twenty-first-century woman—as a wife, as a mother, and as a lover—and to ask herself whether, after loving her husband and loving Mr Takaoka, she is ready for her third great love.
Reviews
Time, A Most Anticipated Book of the Fall
"[K]awakami herself invents a narrative language that traverses timelines and dialects, by which a surrealist depiction of a woman’s coming-of-age emerges . . . [W]hat her protagonist discovers reads as radically feminist to me, a way of living that no longer privileges the role of wife over that of friend, daughter, mother, intellectual compatriot, co-conspirator." —Emmeline Clein, The New York Times Book Review
"The Third Love explores the ways identities can shift with various forms of knowledge, and if we're lucky we'll end up more worldly and stronger for it." —Maris Kreizman, The Maris Review
"Weaves historical fiction, Japanese literary icons, and meditations on love into a novel that’s remarkable on many levels." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Thanks to the book’s splendid dreamworlds, it unfolds at the scale of a saga . . . In the mystical, immersive novel The Third Love, heady dreams offer new insights into the waking world." —Meg Nola, Foreword Reviews
"The scintillating latest from Kawakami . . . Readers will be transported." —Publishers Weekly
Author
HIROMI KAWAKAMI was born in Tokyo in 1958. Her first novel, Kamisama (God), was published in 1994. In 1996, she was awarded the Akutagawa Prize for “Hebi o Fumu” (“A Snake Stepped On”), and in 2001, she won the Tanizaki Prize for her novel Sensei no Kaban (Strange Weather in Tokyo), which became an international bestseller. Strange Weather in Tokyo was short-listed for the 2013 Man Asian Literary Prize and the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Kawakami has contributed to editions of Granta in both the U.K. and Japan and is one of Japan’s most popular contemporary novelists. Her previous novel in English translation, Under the Eye of the Big Bird, was short-listed for the International Booker Prize.
TED GOOSSEN taught Japanese literature and film at York University in Toronto. He is the general editor of The Oxford Book of Short Stories, the co-editor of the literary journal Monkey, and has published translations of Hiromi Kawakami, Yoko Ogawa and Naoya Shiga, among others. He translated Haruki Murakami’s Wind/Pinball and The Strange Library, and co-translated (with Philip Gabriel) Men Without Women and Killing Commendatore.
