Natsuki isn't like the other girls. Together with her cousin Yuu, she spends her summers in the wild Nagano mountains, hoping a spaceship will take her home. When a terrible sequence of events threatens to part the cousins for ever, they make a promise: survive, no matter what. Now, Natsuki is grown. She lives quietly in an asexual marriage, pretending to be normal, and hiding the horrors of her childhood from her family and friends. But dark shadows from Natsuki's past are pursuing her. Fleeing the suburbs for the mountains of Nagano, Natsuki prepares herself for a reunion with Yuu. Will he still remember their promise? And will he help her keep it? Translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori.

Sayaka Murata was born in Chiba Prefecture in 1979. Her first novel, Jyunyu (Breastfeeding), won the 2003 Gunzo Prize for New Writers and in 2013 she won the Mishima Yukio Prize for Shiro-iro no machi no, sono hone no taion no (Of Bones, Of Body Heat, of Whitening City). Her 10th novel, Konbini ningen, won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize inn 2016, and she was named one of Vogue Japan's Women of the Year. Konbini ningen sold over 600,000 copies in Japan, and became her first book to be translated into English, under the title Convenience Store Woman (2018). Throughout her writing career Murata has worked part-time as a convenience store clerk in Tokyo.

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