The Third Love - by Hiromi Kawakami (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

From one of Japan's most brilliant and sensitive contemporary novelists, and author of Under the Eye of the Big Bird and Strange Weather in Tokyo, The Third Love is a spellbinding novel that moves between Japan past and present to tell a time-bending story about desire and destiny

Having married her childhood sweetheart, Riko now finds herself trapped in a relationship that has been 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 17th 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 21st-century woman - as a wife, as a mother, and as a lover - and to ask herself: after loving her husband and loving Mr Takaoka, is she is ready for her third great love?

About the 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 (Tread on a Snake), 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 International Foreign Fiction Prize. Kawakami has contributed to editions of Granta in both the UK and Japan and is one of Japan's most popular contemporary novelists.

TED GOOSSEN teaches Japanese literature and film at York University in Toronto. He is the general editor of The Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories and has published translations by Hiromi Kawakami, Yōko Ogawa, Naoya Shiga, and Sachiko Kishimoto, 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.