Following The Nakano Thrift Shop, Hiromi Kawakami’s breakout success, comes a new novel full of charm, subtlety, and style by an author whose readership in Japan numbers in the millions.

Each woman in this book has succumbed, even if only for an hour, to that seductive, imprudent, and furtively feline man who managed to glide so naturally into their lives. But who really was Yukihiko Nishino?

Still clinging to the vivid memory of his warm breath, his indecipherable silences, and his nonchalance, ten women who have loved him tell their stories as they attempt to recreate the image of the unfathomable and seemingly unattainable Nishino. Through accounts that are full of humor, intelligence, and the bittersweet joys of love, these women evoke Nishino’s image but reveal themselves. Each perspective is both captivating and sensual, droll but important, and each is a variation on themes of love and identity.

‘If you like Haruki Murakami and Yoko Ogawa, it’s a safe bet that you’ll love The Ten Loves of Nishino.’ - DozoDomo (France)

‘Reading Kawakami is like taking a warm bath. Her work is an homage to melancholy, to impossibility or, perhaps even more accurately, to the constant sate of indeterminateness that we humans unwittingly inhabit.’ - Pabo D'Ors, ABC

‘Subtle and delicate, in its details Kawakami’s prose traces the signs that the soul leaves on one’s consciousness.’ - Pere Guiza, El Pais