Territory of Light

A Novel

By: Yuko Tsushima

Narrated by: Rina Takasaki

From one of the most significant contemporary Japanese writers, a haunting, dazzling audiobook of loss and rebirth.

“Yuko Tsushima is one of the most important Japanese writers of her generation.” (Foumiko Kometani, The New York Times)

I was puzzled by how I had changed. But I could no longer go back....

It is spring. A young woman, left by her husband, starts a new life in a Tokyo apartment. Territory of Light follows her over the course of a year as she struggles to bring up her two-year-old daughter alone. Her new home is filled with light streaming through the windows, so bright she has to squint, but she finds herself plummeting deeper into darkness, becoming unstable, untethered. As the months come and go and the seasons turn, she must confront what she has lost and what she will become.

At once tender and lacerating, luminous and unsettling, Yuko Tsushima’s Territory of Light is an audiobook of abandonment, desire, and transformation. It was originally published in 12 parts in the Japanese literary monthly Gunzo between 1978 and 1979, each chapter marking the months in real time. It won the inaugural Noma Literary Prize.

(P)2018 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year - 2019
Hudson Booksellers Best of the Year - 2019
2019 Kirkus Prize Finalist Shortlisted

A poetic metaphor

The beauty and the creative telling of a year of growth and separation was spellbinding. I read this novel in one day. I could not put it down

I look forward to reading more novels by Yuko Tsushima.