The Refugees' Daughter

About

In a society fracturing along lines of conflict and a world approaching extinction, a young woman emerges from a refugee community carrying questions that the powerful would rather not answer. Ichikawa, one of Japan's most imaginative novelists, builds a speculative framework around the most human of dilemmas: in a crisis, whose voices deserve to be heard — the strongest or the most vulnerable? The novel is quieter than its premise suggests, more interested in the interior lives of its characters than in the mechanics of its dystopia. The refugees' daughter is not a warrior or a savior but a witness, and her testimony is the most dangerous thing in the story. A novel about who we listen to when the world is ending — and why the answer says more about us than about the crisis.