Kitchen

With the publication of Kitchen, the dazzling English-language debut that is still her best-loved book, the literary world realized that Banana Yoshimoto was a young writer of enduring talent whose work has quickly earned a place among the best of contemporary Japanese literature.

Kitchen is an enchantingly original book that juxtaposes two tales about mothers, love, tragedy, & the power of the kitchen & home in the lives of a pair of free-spirited young women in contemporary Japan. 

Mikage, the heroine, is an orphan raised by her grandmother, who has passed away. Grieving, Mikage is taken in by her friend Yoichi & his mother (who is really his cross-dressing father) Eriko. As the three of them form an improvised family that soon weathers its own tragic losses, Yoshimoto spins a lovely, evocative tale with the kitchen & the comforts of home at its heart.

In a whimsical style that recalls the early Marguerite Duras, Kitchen and its companion story, Moonlight Shadow, are elegant tales whose seeming simplicity is the ruse of a very special writer whose voice echoes in the mind & the soul. 

“Lucid, earnest & disarming . . . [It] seizes hold of the reader’s sympathy and refuses to let go.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

°°°

BANANA YOSHIMOTO wrote her first novel, Kitchen, while working as a waitress at a golf-course restaurant. It sold millions of copies worldwide, & led to a phenomenon dubbed by Western journalists as “Banana mania.” Yoshimoto has gone on to be one of the biggest-selling & most distinguished writers in Japanese history, winning numerous awards for her work. The Lake is her thirteenth book of fiction.