A young boy returns obsessively to a supermarket sandwich counter, entranced by the beauty of the woman who works there. Her aloof demeanour and electric blue eyelids make him feel the most intense joy he's ever known. He calls her Ms Ice Sandwich, and he wants nothing more than to spend his days watching her coolly slip sandwiches into bags. But life keeps getting in the way - there's his beloved grandmother's illness, and a faltering friendship with his classmate Tutti, who she invites him into her private world. Wry, intimate and wonderfully skewed, Ms Ice Sandwich is a poignant depiction of the naivety and wisdom of youth, just as it is passing.
Born in Osaka prefecture in 1976, Mieko Kawakami began her career as a singer and songwriter before making her literary debut in 2006. Her first novella My Ego, My Teeth, and the World, published in 2007, was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize and awarded the Tsubouchi Shoyo Prize for Young Emerging Writers. The following year, Kawakami published Breasts and Eggs as a short novella. It won the Akutagawa Prize, Japan's most prestigious literary honour, and earned praise from the acclaimed writer Yoko Ogawa. Kawakami's work has been widely translated, and she is the author of the novels Heaven, The Night Belongs to Lovers, and the newly expanded Breasts and Eggs, her first novel to be published in English. She lives in Japan.
Title: Ms Ice Sandwich (Japanese Novellas)
Author: Mieko Kawakami
ISBN: 9781782276722
Binding:
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Publication Date: 2020-08-06
Number of Pages: 96
Weight: 0.0930 kg
One of John Freeman's 29 Writers to Watch
Whimsical... Described as Haruki Murakami's favorite young novelist, Kawakami is destined to charm Anglophone audiences as well. - Library Journal
Mieko Kawakami is a master of the novella. . . A moving and surprisingly funny tale of growing up and learning how to lose, it is no overstatement to assert that Ms Ice Sandwich is Mieko Kawakami at her very best. . . Very highly recommended. - Midwest Book Review
Delightful... Kawakami's dialogue, fluidly rendered into English by Louise Heal Kawai, captures beautifully and with great humor the eager dynamism of a child's mind. - World Literature Today
A subtle and endearing novella with a sweet sense of humor. Kawakami touches on loss, societal perceptions, first loves and new beginnings through the eyes of a grade-school boy and his relationships with the women closest to him. --Sara S., Vroman's Bookstores
Mieko Kawakami's 2008 novel Breasts & Eggs won Japan's prestigious Akutagawa Prize. The reissued novella Ms Ice Sandwich... is a delightful distraction, and an appetiser for her work. - The Irish Times
A touching novella. . . Poignant. - Culture Trip
Easily digestible...a book that ultimately lives longer in the memory than the hour or so it takes to read. - Financial Times
Among many other awards, Haruki Murakami listed Mieko Kawakami as his favorite young writer, so you're obviously going to want to snatch up Ms. Ice Sandwich, her first book translated into English. This is a lovely coming-of-age story about a boy who becomes obsessed with a woman who sells sandwiches. - Bustle
In Louise Heal Kawai's translation, the novella is a wonderful example of the power of narrative voice. - Japan Times
Reading this quirky coming of age novella was one of the best hours I've spent in sometime. - The Word's Shortlist (blog)
Haruki Murakami's favourite young writer. . . a funny, touching story. - A Life in Books
