She comes to believe that she has magical powers - including 'out-of-body experiences' in which her soul dissociates from her human body - though this is more likely to be a coping mechanism for trauma - and has been entrusted with a mission to rid the world of a wicked witch.Īs an adult, she enters into a sexless, romance-less, contractual marriage with Tomoya in order to satisfy the demand that they become cogs of the 'Factory' - a euphemism for society at large, epitomised by her endlessly prying mother and sister. I was probably causing a nuisance to the neighbours just by existing.'

Natsuki says: 'The person who had given birth to me said I was a dead loss, so I decided it really must be true. Parents, drawn to the cutesy cover, may be inclined to pick up the book for their children, but should be forewarned that it contains adult themes such as incest - albeit consensual - cannibalism, sexual awakening and child abuse.

They privately exchange marriage vows, entering a pact to 'survive no matter what', though they are eventually split up.Įarthlings is not the easiest novel to stomach. Later, as a grown woman, living a quiet life with her asexual husband, Natsuki is still pursued by dark shadows from her childhood, and decides to flee the 'baby factory' of society for good, searching for answers about the vast and frightening mysteries of the universe-answers only Natsuki has the power to uncover.ĭreamlike, sometimes shocking, and always strange and wonderful, Earthlings asks what it means to be happy in a stifling world, and cements Sayaka Murata's status as a master chronicler of the outsider experience and our own uncanny universe.The two children, who meet only once a year when the extended family gathers in a family home in mountainous Nagano, see themselves 'living as parasites on our families'. One summer, on vacation with her family and her cousin Yuu in her grandparents' ramshackle wooden house in the mountains of Nagano, Natsuki decides that she must be an alien, which would explain why she can't seem to fit in like everyone else. He tells her that he has come from the planet Popinpobopia on a special quest to help her save the Earth. Her parents favor her sister, and her best friend is a plush toy hedgehog named Piyyut, who talks to her. Now, in Earthlings, Sayaka Murata pushes at the boundaries of our ideas of social conformity in this brilliantly imaginative, intense, and absolutely unforgettable novel.Īs a child, Natsuki doesn't fit in with her family. Sayaka Murata's Convenience Store Woman was one of the most unusual and refreshing bestsellers of recent years, depicting the life of a thirty-six-year-old clerk in a Tokyo convenience store.

From the beloved author of cult sensation Convenience Store Woman, which has now sold more than one million copies worldwide and has been translated into thirty-three languages, comes a spellbinding and otherworldly novel about a woman who believes she is an alien

Earthlings by Sayaka Murata