Before You Go Extinct
Translated by Yuki Tejima
About
Two souls migrate through a series of animal lives — penguins, otters, crows, and more — each incarnation teaching them something about what it means to exist. A rock sits at the centre of it all, patient and unchanging, while the world around it cycles through creation and destruction. Takashi Ushiroyato's novel is a fable about the value of culture, the beauty of play in a world that demands productivity, and the stubborn persistence of love in the face of extinction. Gentle, strange, and unexpectedly moving — a story that asks whether the things that make life worth living are the same things that make it worth continuing.