In 2018, Sayaka Murata’s first novel to be translated into English, Convenience Store Woman, was a surprise hit, becoming remarkably popular for a book so openly critical of social precepts in a way that was both culturally specific to Japan and also resonant for an American audience and across the globe. Murata took her quietly radical ideas about marriage, sex and conformity and only made them louder in Earthlings. Vanishing World appears to go even further, set in a version of Japan where sex between married couples is taboo.
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