Written in startlingly beautiful prose, Harmless Like You is set across New York, Connecticut, and Berlin. At its heart is Yuki Oyama, a Japanese girl fighting to make it as an artist, and her struggle with her decision to leave her two-year-old son, Jay. As an adult, Jay sets out to find his mother and confront her abandonment.

About the Author
Rowan Hisayo Buchanan is a British-Japanese-Chinese-American novelist. She received a BA from Columbia University and currently resides in the UK. Harmless Like You won an Authors' Club First Novel Award and a Betty Trask Award. It was a New York Times Editors' Choice and a 2017 NPR Great Read.

Reviews
"Buchanan's prose is lyrical and evocative.... After all, Buchanan reminds us, the ethereal dreams of the 1960s shaped the all-too-solid contours of the world we inhabit today." -- New York Times Book Review
"Buchanan writes with beauty and sensitivity about what it means to be an artist, a parent, and an outsider in a foreign culture." -- New York Journal of Books
"[T]here are so many mature notions of patience, sacrifice, and terrible sadness that it's startling to realize how young the author of the book is." -- Los Angeles Review of Books
"In Harmless Like You... characters look for ways to reconcile themselves with their histories, though in vastly different and sometimes opposing ways." -- Guardian
"Harmless Like You is a beautifully written, many-layered novel that, at its core, tells the personal story of a mother and a son-a struggling artist and the child she left behind in pursuit of that art." -- Bustle
"Rowan Hisayo Buchanan is only 26 and [Harmless Like You] is a stunning debut that would make a writer four times her years proud." -- Elle Canada
"This elegant and moving novel burns slowly, building in intensity as it develops to explore the subjects of identity, alienation and desire." -- Daily Mail
"[Buchanan] find[s] ways of depicting difference, painting characters from numerous races and cultures.... Her ways of infusing a character's culture have more to do with habits and perspective than with pigeonholes, making this the rare debut that does not smack of received knowledge." -- Literary Hub
"A relentlessly honest book, capturing some of the ugliest and under-represented facets of life, in rich, elegant prose." -- Irish Independent
"Harmless Like You is a refreshing, bold book about understatement." -- Sunday Telegraph


Awards
Long-listed for Aspen Words Literary Prize 2018.



Book Information
ISBN 9780393355741
Author Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
Format Paperback
Page Count 320
Imprint WW Norton & Co
Publisher WW Norton & Co
Weight(grams) 252g
Dimensions(mm) 211mm * 140mm * 20mm