Earthlings by Sayaka Murata

Natsuki knows she's not like other people. As a child she believes she is a magician, sent from the planet Popinpobopia by her plush hedgehog Piyyut to save the Earth. As an adult trapped in what she and her husband call the Factory — the relentless societal machine that demands marriage, work, and reproduction — she clings to that childhood pact, and to the memory of her cousin Yuu, who once told her he was an alien too. When the three of them retreat to her family's house in the mountains of Akishina, their refusal to be ordinary curdles into something stranger and far more disturbing. A radical, mordantly funny, and genuinely shocking novel from the author of Convenience Store Woman, Earthlings is a fable about conformity, trauma, and the violence of being told to belong.

247 pages · Published: 2020-10-06 · ISBN: 9780802157003 · Genres: Literary Fiction, Japanese Literature, Contemporary, Horror