N.P.

About

A collection of interconnected stories within a book called N.P. has become cursed — its translator killed himself before finishing the final story, and everyone who gets close to the manuscript is pulled into its orbit. The people affected include the dead author's children, the translator's former lover, and a young woman who finds herself drawn into relationships that blur the boundaries between love, obsession, and literary possession. Banana Yoshimoto's novel treats literature as a kind of haunting — a text that infects the people who touch it, binding them together in ways they didn't choose. A story about the dangerous intimacy of translation, and about what happens when a book refuses to let its readers go.