Sayaka Murata has proven herself to be one of the most exciting chroniclers of the strangeness of society, x-raying our contemporary world to bizarre and troubling effect. Her depictions of a happily unmarried retail worker in Convenience Store Woman and a young woman convinced she is an alien in Earthlings have endeared her to millions of readers worldwide. Vanishing World takes Murata’s universe to a bold new level, imagining an alternative Japan where attitudes to sex and procreation are wildly different to our own.

As a girl, Amane realizes with horror that her parents “copulated” in order to bring her into the world, rather than using artificial insemination, which became the norm in the mid-twentieth century. Amane strives to get away from what she considers an indoctrination in this strange “system” by her mother, but her infatuations with both anime characters and real people have a sexual force that is undeniable. As an adult in an appropriately sexless marriage—sex between married couples is now considered as taboo as incest—Amane and her husband Saku decide to go and live in a mysterious new town called Experiment City or Paradise-Eden, where all children are raised communally, and every person is considered a Mother to all children. Men are beginning to become pregnant using artificial wombs that sit outside of their bodies like balloons, and children are nameless, called only “Kodomo-chan.” Is this the new world that will purify Amane of her strangeness once and for all?

Praise for Vanishing World:

“The fictosexual love scenes express a pure sensual pleasure that is rare in Murata’s work, occasionally reminding me of Céline Sciamma’s film “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” in which the two female leads invent new modes of erotic union . . . Murata, like Sciamma, is remaking the traditional love story, transcending the constraints dictated not by gender but by embodied corporeality itself.”—Elif Batuman, New Yorker

“Through her fiction, Ms. Murata has resolutely explored the strangeness of the cultural practices we otherwise consider ordinary… For those who feel haunted by the whole idea of the normal, Vanishing World offers, like all of this writer’s books, something you just can’t find anywhere else.”—Wall Street Journal

“As Murata writes, ‘Normality is the creepiest madness there is.’ What feels at first like a fascinating thought experiment — a sexless world — slowly seeps into your skin, itchy and confounding. It all leads to a brutal ending that somehow feels at once gratuitous and like the only way this all could have turned out.”—Washington Post

“The Handmaid’s Tale on acid . . . Blending speculative fiction, horror and black comedy, Vanishing World removes some Jenga blocks to watch social structures come crashing down, in a radical look at the way the imperative to procreate has shaped civilization.”—New York Times “Editor’s Choice”

“Vanishing World is a comedy, its darkness almost indistinguishable from horror under Murata’s restrained style, which is translated expertly by Ginny Tapley Takemori, her regular collaborator . . . Murata’s skill is to accumulate the strange, the sad and the comic so expertly . . . that the indelible final scene can make us experience many different feelings at once.”—Financial Times

“Compulsively readable . . . Vanishing World is . . . a novel that takes nothing for granted, asking readers to question a wide scope of social norms that range from the purpose of sex to the institution of family itself. This book cements Murata’s place as a noteworthy voice in modern Japanese literature, and her work will surely continue to surprise and provoke readers for years to come.”—Harvard Crimson

“Japan’s answer to Brave New World”—Telegraph

“An intimate and disturbing speculative tale in which social isolation and population control are taken to extremes . . . Murata’s blunt and bizarre humor is on full display, as is her incisive commentary on contemporary Japan. This nightmarish fable is impossible to shake.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Call it speculative fiction, alternate reality, or science fiction, Vanishing World succeeds in every way as it lulls the reader into a disturbing complacency.”—Sampan

Praise for Sayaka Murata:

“To Sayaka Murata, nonconformity is a slippery slope . . . Reminiscent of certain excellent folk tales, expressionless prose is Murata’s trademark . . . The strength of [Murata’s] voice lies in the faux-naïf lens through which she filters her dark view of humankind: We earthlings are sad, truncated bots, shuffling through the world in a dream of confusion.”—New York Times Book Review

“Murata takes a childlike idea and holds onto it with imaginative fervor, brilliantly exposing the callousness and arbitrariness of convention.”—New Yorker

“Murata manages what her characters cannot: She transcends society’s core values, to dizzying effect . . . Her matter-of-fact rendering of wild events is as disorienting as it is intriguing.”—Atlantic

“If you’re in the mood for weird, Sayaka Murata is always a reliable place to turn.”—Seattle Times

“Murata’s skill is in turning round the world so that the abnormal, uncivil or even savage paths appear—if momentarily—to make sense.”—Financial Times

“The imagination of this writer grows and grows like outer space.”—Literary Hub

“Murata celebrate[s] the quiet heroism of women who accept the cost of being themselves.”—NPR’s Fresh Air

“Murata’s sparkly writing and knack for odd, beautiful details are totally her own.”—Vogue

“Murata’s novels are a valuable, heightened exploration of the intense discomfort that people, autistic or not, who are just a little outside of society can feel when they try to force themselves to fit in. Murata’s message is: stop trying.”—i-D

“Murata’s writing remains essential and captivating, expertly capturing the fragility of social norms and calling into question what remains of human nature once they’re stripped away.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Murata’s premises are always eye-opening, and the result will intrigue and satisfy readers of literary and speculative fiction alike.”—Library Journal

Reading Group Guide

Written by Ayaz O. Muratoglu for Vanishing World.

1. Early on, we learn how the narrator’s relationship to romance, sex, and the body is shaped by her mother. She writes, of the evenings where her mother works late, “The house felt like it was covered in the sticky fingerprints of her soul, and I was relieved that I couldn’t see her face” (26). How does the narrator’s relationship with her mother—specifically as this ghostly, nearly haunting, presence—set the tone for the novel?

2. For much of the book, Amane frequently turns to her fictional lovers in times of need, pulling them out of her Prada pouch while on a walk at the river or in the bathroom at work. In fact, she explains to her coworker, “Some people say it’s escaping reality, but I don’t agree. Rather, it’s nourishing my soul so that I can live in reality” (85). What does Amane’s reliance on these fictional characters reveal about the rest of her relationships in the book?

3. Early on, Amane distinguishes between the two types of sexual love she feels, one with “a real person,” and the other with “someone in a story, the former of which involves “taste and smell,” the latter of which “was solely a conversation with my own flesh” (34). What do you make of these distinctions, and how do they change as the book progresses?

4. How do the characters in this book—Amane, Saku, Juri, Mizuto, Amane’s mother—consider themselves in relation to history? What might be the dangers of thinking that one exists outside of history as represented in Vanishing World?

5. Amane reflects, “The thought that we were properly integrated within the system was a relief. We weren’t just using the family system because it was useful; it also gave rise to a kind of unshakeable bond. Love and sexual desire were like waste material, something to be disposed of outside the home” (82). What do you think Amane and Saku mean when they say “family,” and how does it differ from love and sexual desire?