Vanishing World

About

In a version of Japan where sex between married couples has become obsolete — reproduction handled by technology, intimacy by other means — Murata imagines what happens to desire, partnership, and social structure when the most basic human transaction is no longer necessary. The characters navigate a world where the rules have changed but the longings haven't. From the author of Convenience Store Woman, this is another of Murata's thought experiments about normalcy — what it is, who defines it, and what happens when the definition shifts. The premise is speculative, but the emotional territory is familiar: people trying to connect in a world that keeps inventing new barriers between them. A novel about a world without sex — and the discovery that desire doesn't vanish when its object does.