Convenience Store Woman

About

Keiko Furukura has worked at the same Tokyo convenience store for eighteen years. She is thirty-six, single, and perfectly content — a fact that horrifies her family, bewilders her friends, and fascinates no one more than it fascinates Keiko herself. Inside the store, she knows exactly who she is: a flawless cog in a beautiful machine. Outside, she's a problem everyone wants to solve. Sayaka Murata's breakthrough novel is a deadpan comedy about conformity that cuts far deeper than it first appears. Through Keiko's relentlessly logical perspective, the absurdity of "normal" life comes into sharp focus — the performance of ambition, the theater of relationships, the unspoken rules everyone else seems to know. What begins as quirky social satire builds quietly into something more radical: a declaration of independence from the life everyone insists you should want.

Awards

• ★Akutagawa Prize(2016 - Winner)