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Start giftingDead-End Memories
Stories
Narrator
Kathleen Li
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
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Translator
Asa Yoneda
Length
4 hours 38 minutes
Language
English
Japan's internationally celebrated master storyteller returns with five stories of women on their way to healing that vividly portrays the blissful moments and the sorrows that surround us in everyday life
First published in Japan in 2003, Dead-End Memories collects the stories of five women who, following sudden and painful events, quietly discover their ways back to recovery.
Among the women we meet in Dead-End Memories is one betrayed by her fiancé who finds a perfect refuge in an apartment above her uncle's bar while seeking the real meaning of happiness. In "House of Ghosts," the daughter of a yoshoku restaurant owner encounters the ghosts of a sweet elderly couple who haven't yet realized that they've been dead for years. In "Tomo-chan's Happiness," an office worker who is a victim of sexual assault finally catches sight of the hope of romance.
Yoshimoto's gentle, effortless prose reminds us that one true miracle can be as simple as having someone to share a meal with, and that happiness is always within us if only we take a moment to pause and reflect. Discover this collection of what Yoshimoto herself calls the "most precious work of my writing career."
Banana Yoshimoto is the author of the international bestseller Kitchen. She has published ten books in English translation, including Goodbye Tsugumi, Moshi Moshi, and most recently, Dead-End Memories. Her work has been translated and published in more than thirty countries. In Italy, she won the Scanno Literary Prize in 1993, the Fendissime Literary Prize in 1996, the Maschera d'Argento Prize in 1999, and the Capri Award in 2011. She lives in Tokyo.
Kathleen Li is an Asian American narrator whose parents are from Taiwan. She has a warm, engaging, and empathetic voice that lends itself equally to YA, fantasy, historical fiction, and self-help audiobooks, as well as to other genres. She has also voiced characters in several audio dramas, including Doctor Who: The Voice of Reason, Seminar, and Pod to Pluto. Kathleen lives in Austin, Texas, where she sometimes slips into a Texas twang. When she's not in her booth narrating, you can find her learning to play violin, doing water aerobics, or cheering on her son's high school marching band.
Asa Yoneda was born in Osaka, and studied language, literature, and translation at the University of Oxford and SOAS University of London. Her translation works include Moshi Moshi by Banana Yoshimoto and The Lonesome Bodybuilder by Yukiko Motoya. She lives in Bristol, UK.
