Gifted - Paperback

by Suzumi Suzuki (Author), Allison Markin Powell (Translator)

A subtle and intimate accounting of a daughter's final days with her mother, set amid the rush of Tokyo's red-light district.

Drawing on her own experiences as a hostess and adult film actor, Gifted--Suzumi Suzuki's first novel to be translated into English--offers a nuanced, frank, and intimate portrayal of the lives of a mother and daughter getting by (or not) in an industry rarely depicted authentically in literary fiction.In the last days of her mother's life, a young woman living in Tokyo's red-light district is thrust into a split existence. By day, she negotiates her new role as caregiver of an abusive parent. By night, she drifts home from the hospital, goes out with other sex-workers, thinks about quitting smoking, and numbly remembers Eri, a friend who died the summer before. Her sensitivity to the details of her surroundings grounds an otherwise unstable world, one where each interaction requires a subtle negotiation of economic and sexual power, and proximity rarely means intimacy or connection.

Author Biography

Suzumi Suzuki is a Japanese writer. Since the release of her first book, a sociological study of actresses working in pornographic films, she has published works of both nonfiction and fiction. Suzuki's autobiographical book If You Sell Your Body, Then Goodbye! was adapted into a 2017 Eiji Uchida film. Her novel Gifted was nominated for the 167th Akutagawa Prize, and her novel Graceless was nominated for the 168th Akutagawa Prize.