Description: In this intoxicating stream-of-consciousness novel, Mieko Kanai tackles the existential traps of motherhood, marriage, and domestic captivity
Brief description: Born in 1947, Mieko Kanai is a novelist, poet, short-story writer, essayist, and critic. Her novel Mild Vertigo was called "mesmerizing" (The New York Times), "monumental" (Japan Times), and "urgent" (The Atlantic)
Review Quotes: Like Mrs. Dalloway, Mild Vertigo plunges the reader into the mind of a woman of comfortable means who is trying to make sense of her world even as she is bombarded by a tumult of impressions, memories, worries, constraints. My thoughts began to mimic the buzzy, galumphing rhythms of Natsumi's interior world. I began to wonder whether I had always thought this way, whether this book was making me aware of the true nature of my mind for the first time. Such is the mesmerizing wonder of Kanai's prose, as translated by Polly Barton.--Claire Oshetsky "The New York Times"