Both the sadism and masochism here is very raw—but pain and pleasure mingle in ways that never cease to be surprising or poetic.

—T-Magazine

Toddler Hunting and Other Stories

Fiction by Kono Taeko

Winner of Japan’s top literary prizes (the Akutagawa, the Tanizaki, the Noma, and the Yomiuri), Taeko Kono writes with a strange beauty: her tales are pinpricked with disquieting scenes, her characters all teetering on self-dissolution, especially in the context of their intimate relationships. In the title story, the protagonist loathes young girls but compulsively buys expensive clothes for little boys so that she can watch them dress and undress. Taeko Kono’s detached gaze at this alarming behavior transfixes the reader: What are we hunting for? And why? Multiplying perspectives and refracting light from the facing mirrors of fantasy and reality, pain and pleasure, Toddler-Hunting and Other Stories presents a major Japanese writer at her very best.

Your Independent Bookstore Barnes & Noble

Paperback (published October 30, 2018)

ISBN
9780811228275
Price US
16.95
Price CN
21.95
Trim Size
5x8
Page Count
272
ISBN
9780811228282

Kono Taeko

Taeko Kono is a well known contemporary Japanese writer and critic.

Both the sadism and masochism here is very raw—but pain and pleasure mingle in ways that never cease to be surprising or poetic.

—T-Magazine

I was not prepared for this unsettling and unforgettable collection. These stories left me shaken and in awe; they are incendiary, beautiful, and frightening confrontations of the lives we keep hidden from others. Taeko Kono fearlessly writes into the abyss, and there is no one like her.

—Gabe Habash, author of Stephen Florida

Japanese master of the unsettling: Kono should be an electrifying discovery for English-speaking lovers of short fiction. Each story unburies something that feels both thrillingly specific and surprisingly contemporary.

—Kirkus (starred review)

Provocative and eerily moving in their confrontation of the terrifying and the taboo. Each of Kono’s stories features characters confronting new ways to live with their own secret selves: a strikingly original and surprising collection. 

—Publishers Weekly (starred)

Kono’s intimate descriptions of unhappy relationships are not only unexpectedly frank, but often genuinely shocking.

—The Boston Review

Kono’s unsparing gaze penetrates the depths of human nature, and she sets forth what she finds there with absolute precision.

—Shusaku Endo

Reminiscent of Flannery O’Connor’s works, Kono’s stories explore the dark, terrifying side of human nature that manifests itself in antisocial behavior.

—World Literature Today