Another beautiful novel from the winner of Akutagawa Prize, the Noma Literary Prize, and the Yomiuri Prize, among other literary prizes.
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 gas and other necessities is getting more and more expensive.
Still, the village officer wants them to keep living there to prevent border violations as the last surviving women are in fact saving Japan from invasion by a neighbouring country. Occasionally Io’s daughter Umiko visits the island, trying to convince them to move to the mainland for their safety, but 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.
ISLAND OF THE BIRD FOLK is comical but sharply criticises our attachment to our possessions, more specifically to our land. Dreaming of being a bird is an act of protest – there is no mine or yours in the world of birds and Murata gives a spotlight to the least heroic characters to question our fundamental desires.
Kiyoko Murata (Author)
KIYOKO MURATA has been awarded over ten major literary awards in Japan, including the Akutagawa Prize. A Woman of Pleasure was her first book to be published in English. She lives in Fukuoka, Japan. Her latest novel, Island of the Bird-Folk won the Tanizaki Prize in 2019. Murata lives in Fukuoka, Japan.
Juliet Winters Carpenter (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.
