Kawakami is an author known and reviewed around the world Manazuru received great praise when Counterpoint released it in 2010; the book already has reviews by Booklist , the Paris Review Daily , the Independent , and Publishers Weekly . This is a reissue of a quiet, beloved novel by celebrated Japanese author, Hiromi Kawakami (the original 2012 Counterpoint edition was titled The Briefcase , 9781582435992) This reissue will coincide with Europa's publication of Kawakami's The Nakano Thrift Shop (9781609453992, June 2017) and Counterpoint's re-release of Strange Weather in Tokyo , another lauded Kawakami novel (9781640090163, August 2017) «[In Japan] we have something called 'palm-of-the-hand stories,' brief and strangely evocative pieces of fiction so short they might fit in your palm…conjuring an underlying, unseen world that lies beyond with just a brief description or a few words.» —Hiromi Kawakami The two re-released novels complement each other: both are concise, poetic meditations on the cyclic patterns of loneliness and love—one protagonist is in the city, the other is on the seaside Translator Michael Emmerich was a Costen Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University