After an unnamed catastrophe, Japan has sealed itself off from the world. The elderly, like 100-year-old Yoshiro, live on seemingly forever, while children are born frail and sickly. Yoshiro devotes himself to caring for his great-grandson Mumei — a fragile, luminous child who may hold the key to his generation's survival. Strange, tender, and quietly devastating, it's a meditation on aging, environmental collapse, and intergenerational love and guilt, delivered with dark humor and striking imagination. Winner of the National Book Award for Translated Literature (published in the US as The Emissary). Perfect for fans of literary dystopia, Kazuo Ishiguro, or Haruki Murakami's stranger side. [BOOK CONDITION: LIKE NEW]