Kitchen

About

After the death of her grandmother — the last of her family — Mikage finds comfort in only one place: the kitchen. Not any specific kitchen, but the idea of kitchens: their warmth, their light, the sound of a refrigerator humming in the dark. When the beautiful Yuichi and his transgender mother Eriko take her in, Mikage discovers a new kind of family — improvised, unconventional, and held together by the simple act of feeding each other. Banana Yoshimoto's debut, which won two of Japan's most prestigious literary prizes and became an international sensation, writes about grief with a tenderness that never tips into sentimentality. Her prose is luminous and spare, finding in the domestic rituals of cooking and eating a language for loss that formal mourning cannot provide. A novel about the people who become your family when your family is gone — and the kitchens where love takes its most essential form.

Awards

• ★Kaien Newcomer Writers Prize(1988 - Winner)