The Eighth Day

by Mitsuyo Kakuta

Translated from the original Japanese by Margaret Mitsutani

The year is 1985. Kiwako is an ordinary office worker, in love with a married man, until an unwanted abortion causes her to snap. She kidnaps her lover's six-month-old baby and runs away with her, eventually taking refuge in an all-female religious commune. Here, she attempts to raise the girl.

Fifteen years later, the child, Elena, is an adult contending with the difficulties of returning to her "natural family," made up of a mother who doesn't come home, an alcoholic father, and siblings with whom she can't connect.

Mitsuyo Kakuta's powerful second novel in English is a sympathetic portrait of two women brought together by tragedy, each struggling to determine her own destiny. Told in the voices of both the kidnapper and her victim, this compelling exploration of the nature of motherhood and family was a critical and popular success in Japan. Now, Margaret Mitsutani's top-notch translation will enable an even greater number of readers to enjoy the work of one of today's outstanding writers.

(From Publisher).

Mitsuyo Kakuta has written more than 40 books (novels, short stories and essays) and is considered one of Japan's most popular authors. She has won seven major literary awards including the Chuo Koron Literary Prize for The Eighth Day and the Naoki Prize for Woman on the Other Shore, published by Kodansha International in 2007. Her short stories have appeared in English in the Asia Literary Review and Japanese Literature Today.
(From Oxford University Press website)

Mitsuyo Kakuta, this novel's author has a reputation for her talent in describing modern women realistically. This novel depicts two women's suffering. The first is a lady who kidnapped a baby. The second is a grown-up baby who had been kidnapped. The sorrow of people who lost their ordinary lives and the way they live powerfully although facing a difficulty, evoked a favourable response by a huge number of people.