Mild Vertigo (Karui Memai)

First Japanese edition published as Karui Memai in 1997 by Kodansha Ltd., Tokyo

In this intoxicating stream-of-consciousness novel, Mieko Kanai tackles the existential traps of motherhood, marriage, & domestic captivity

The apparently unremarkable Natsumi lives in a modern Tokyo apartment with her husband & two sons: she does the laundry, goes to the supermarket, visits friends, & gossips with neighbors. Tracing her conversations & interactions with her family & friends as they blend seamlessly into her own infernally buzzing internal monologue, Mild Vertigo explores the dizzying reality of being unable to locate oneself in the endless stream of minutiae that forms a lonely life confined to a middle-class home, where both everything & nothing happens.

With shades of Clarice Lispector, Elena Ferrante, & Kobo Abe, this verbally acrobatic novel by the esteemed novelist, essayist, & critic Mieko Kanai—whose work enjoys a cult status in Japan—is a disconcerting & radically imaginative...