Asleep

Banana Yoshimoto

Praise for Asleep:

“Whether or not you believe in ghosts, Banana Yoshimoto's Asleep . . . will haunt you with its beautiful, pared-down prose.”

—Seattle Weekly

“Ethereal, spare [and] startlingly tender . . . It is to Yoshimoto's credit, in this artful translation by Michael Emmerich, that she is able to articulate those physical and emotional states that are more often than not aligned with silence.”

—The New York Times Book Review

“Readers everywhere adore her magically real fiction about modern young women. Written in a powerfully sparse, direct prose, she wonderfully conveys compelling dramatic stories and richly nuanced emotional states. . . . Beautifully written and deliciously plotted, believable magic seamlessly enters into Yoshimoto's fictions.”

—Times Record News

“Brief but powerful . . . Story passes gracefully into allegory.”

—Baltimore Sun

“Seductive . . . dreamy evocations of interior lives of contemporary Japanese . . . [Asleep] shows us something real and human about our times.”

—St. Petersburg Times

“Intoxicating . . . muted and mesmerizing . . . Yoshimoto's simple language and eerie sensibilities combine to present physical and emotional worlds far richer than in traditional narratives. Melancholy is rarely as clean and beautiful as it is in Yoshimoto's light hand.”

—Time Out New York

“Yoshimoto is . . . a poet, a spinner of haikulike sentences and thoughts. . . . Her characters don't forget their pasts; they hold on to their poignant memories. Still Yoshimoto leads them through these emotionally treacherous waters and leaves them dry on the path of life.”

—Raleigh News & Observer

Asleep

ALSO BY BANANA YOSHIMOTO:

Kitchen

N.P.

Lizard

Amrita

BANANA

YOSHIMOTO

Asleep

Translated from the Japanese

by Michael Emmerich

Grove Press

New York

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

This translation is based on the first edition of Shirakawa Yofune, but it incorporates a few changes made by Yoshimoto for the Japanese paperback edition. This translation is dedicated to ItŌ Kiyo.

Published simultaneously in Canada

Printed in the United States of America

Originally published by Kadokawa Shoten as Shirakawa Yofune.

FIRST GROVE PRESS PAPERBACK EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-m-Publication Data Yoshimoto, Banana, 1964–

[Shirakawa yofune. English]

Asleep / Banana Yoshimoto ; translated from the Japanese by Michael Emmerich.

p. cm.

ISBN 0–8021–3820–9 (pbk.)

eISBN 978-0-8021-9099-4

I. Emmerich, Michael. II. Title.

PL835.O7 138 S5415 2000