本屋大賞2019 Japanese Booksellers Award 2019

Even if I’m not interested in every book nominated, I always look forward to the announcement of the books nominated for the Booksellers Award because they are chosen not by a panel of judges looking for “literary merit” (which of course has its place too), but by bookstore staff, who vote for the books they enjoyed the most and recommend to others. These are the books nominated for the 2019 Booksellers Award, with the winner to be announced on April 9.  

『愛なき世界』三浦しをん

World without Love, by Shion Miura

Miura often chooses a specific, overlooked sector of the world (the logging industry in 「神去なあなあ日常」, dictionary publishing in 「舟を編む」, running in 「風が強く吹いている」), and this book is centered on the botany department of a university. We see the department and its eccentric inhabitants—the professor who looks like an assassin, an elderly professor who adores potatoes, and a researcher dedicated to growing the largest cactus—through the eyes of Fujimaru, a young man working at a restaurant nearby. Luckily he is as unfamiliar with botany, microscopes and strange plants as most of us are, so his wonder at the beauty of a plant seen under the microscope is also ours. This is also a love story, although not one with much chance of success because the object of Fujimaru’s affections is Motomura, a graduate student more interested in the シロイヌナズナ (thale cress) she is studying than anything else. 

『ある男』 平野啓一郎

A Man, Keiichiro Hirano

Hirano, who won the 120th Akutagawa Prize in 1999 for 『日蝕』, has written here about a man who changes koseki (family register) with another man to escape his past, but after he dies in an accident his wife finds out that the name he was going by belonged to another man entirely. The lawyer she hires to unwind this mystery has his own problems as a third-generation Korean man. Readers write that this novel reads almost like reporting, with a heavy dose of philosophizing thrown in as well. (If a mystery based on a character taking on someone else’s identity sounds intriguing, I recommend 火車 by 宮部みゆき (Miyuki Miyabe), translated into English by Arnold Birnbaum as “All She Was Worth”).

『さざなみのよる』 木皿泉

Night of Ripples, by Izumi Kizara

The first of these interlinking short stories is narrated by Nasumi, who is dying of cancer at age 43, and the rest of the stories are narrated by her family and friends, showing how she remains part of their lives in ways both profound and mundane. Through their reminiscences of Nasumi as a child, adolescent and adult, the reader ends up with a full picture of her life.

『そして、バトンは渡された』 瀬尾まいこ

And the baton was passed, by Maiko Seo

Yuko has two mothers and three fathers, and has had to change her family name three times. This makes it sound like a novel about broken families and violent foster homes, but each family loves Yuko in their own way as she is passed like a baton, and this novel explores what makes a family.

『熱帯』 森見登美彦

Tropical Zone, by Tomihiko Morimi

The first half of this novel, which is based on the Arabian Nights, revolves around a book (also called 熱帯) that no one has read to the end, and the second half is a fantasy that takes place within that book (and then a story within that book and so on like nested dolls). Many readers on bookmeter said they had no idea what was happening by the end, and one reader even wondered if maybe Morimi’s book was actually the one that no one could finish!

『ひと』 小野寺史宜

People, by Fuminori Onodera

Kiyosuke loses both of its parents in succession and has to drop out of college. With his meagers savings, he tries to live on his own in Tokyo. Good luck brings him to a deli just when he most needs the help, and he finds a job here as well as people who help him get back on his feet. This sounds like a lighter novel with most of the characters being almost too goodhearted to be true, but there is definitely a time and a place for books like this.

『ひとつむぎの手』 知念実希人

Hands of the soul savior, by Mikito Chinen

Mikito Chinen is a practicing doctor who comes from a family of doctors, but he always wanted to be a writer. His first novel was published in 2012 and he has since written several thrillers set in hospitals. This is no exception. Yusuke, a doctor at a university hospital, is ordered by the hospital director to take on the guidance of three residents with the promise of becoming a cardiac surgeon if they join the department. The director also tasks him with finding out who had sent him an anonymous letter denouncing him.

『火のないところに煙は』 芦沢央

Smoke where there is no fire, by Yo Ashizawa

This is a collection of six horror stories with the connection becoming clear in the last story. They are narrated by a novelist (Ashizawa herself) who is asked to write a ghost story set in Kagurazaka. Although she starts by writing about the experience of a friend, a few months after this first story is published in a literary magazine, she begins hearing from other people about their actual experiences. Ashizawa writes as if these were true stories she is merely reporting.

『フーガはユーガ』 伊坂幸太郎

Fuga is Yuga, by Kotaro Isaka

This SF mystery begins with Yuga talking to a man in a family restaurant in Sendai. He talks about his twin brother Fuga and their childhood, marked by their father’s domestic violence and bullying, but made bearable by their special skill—they can switch places on their birthday, once a year. As adults, they become involved again in an incident from their childhood. It might sound depressing, but in Isaka’s hands it becomes something different. The twins’ names, which sound like “who” and “you,” are just one example of Isaka’s playfulness. 

『ベルリンは晴れているか』 深緑野分

Is it sunny in Berlin? by Nowaki Fukamidori

Nowaki has written a historical mystery set in Germany just after WWII. Seventeen year-old Augusta works in a canteen for US soldiers, but when she learns of the mysterious death of a man who had protected her during the war, she sets out on a search for his nephew to tell him the news. She runs into a good-natured former actor turned thief named Kafka on the road, and they become traveling companions. Augusta’s own story of how she survived the war is told in intervening chapters.