For the sake of women everywhere, Ms Shibata is going to pull off the mother of all deceptions... 'Incredibly thought-provoking... you'll love Yagi's writing' STYLIST Ms Shibata refuses to clear away the coffee at work one day, because she's pregnant and can't bear the smell. The only thing is . . . Ms Shibata is not pregnant. Being a mother-to-be isn't easy. Ms Shibata has a nine-month ruse to keep up. Before long, it becomes all-absorbing, and with the help of towel-stuffed shirts and a diary app that tracks every stage of her 'pregnancy', the boundary between her lie and her life begins to dissolve. Discover this prizewinning, thrillingly subversive new novel that's perfect for fans of Convenience Store Woman and Breasts and Eggs. 'A subversive, surreal read that will strike a cord' RED 'One of the most passionate cases I've ever read for female interiority, for women's creative pulse and rich inner life' NEW YORKER Translated from the Japanese by David Boyd and Lucy North

'Chilling.' Vogue 'As unusual as it is alluring.' Elle 'Delightfully disturbing.' Refinery 29 'Very powerful.' Sayaka Murata 'Disquieting.' Paula Hawkins 'You will be obsessed.' Leila Slimani The Woman in the Purple Skirt is being watched. Someone is following her, always perched just out of sight, monitoring which buses she takes; what she eats; whom she speaks to. But this invisible observer isn't a stalker - it's much more complicated than that.

The Akutagawa Prize-winning stories from the author of Strange Weather in Tokyo In these three haunting and lyrical stories, three young women experience unsettling loss and romance. 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.