Schoolgirl

In Schoolgirl, a wealthy housewife, dogged by ennui, struggles to connect with her teenage daughter, who turns to YouTube to vent her frustration with the climate crisis and muse about her day-to-day life in Tōkyō. Through the fog of generational tension and unresolved ethics, mother and daughter find a shared connection in Osamu Dazai's 1939 novella Schoolgirl. Qudan's debut moves between the mother's interiority - shaped by domesticity, loneliness, and an AI smart-speaker that offers a disturbing substitute for human warmth - and her daughter's bilingual online voice, probing how language itself encodes identity and power.

In Bad Music, a music teacher named Sonata, the daughter of a famous composer, contemplates the path she has taken. Through correspondence with her roommate Sae, a painter, she discovers art's capacity to exceed the boundaries of acceptable behaviour - or perhaps, to stay within them. As she plots something perverse enough to risk her job, Sonata considers how truth is lost - or found - through performance.

Darkly funny and stunningly mysterious, these two novellas pinpoint the effects of technology, conflicting desires, and the shifts and rifts in relationships. Rie Qudan, winner of one of Japan's most prestigious literary awards, the Akutagawa Prize, explores the affectation and compromise required of us all, providing a disquieting view of the many faces of modern life. Translated from the Japanese by Haydn Trowell.