"The stench intensified further, far beyond a bearable pungency, and Kazue began to feel a piercing pain in her temple. The stench swirled through the air, aggressively noxious, as Kazue turned to Misa, who was dazed with fear."

In this disorientating, surprising, and intriguing story, a strange, organ-like creature is discovered in a styrofoam box before being taken in to be cared for by a family over many years, with ultimately bizarre consequences.

About the Author

Haneko Takayama is a writer, born in 1975 in Toyama prefecture, Japan. In 2010, she won an honorable mention in the Sogen SF Short Story Prize for UDON (Unknown Dog of Nobody); in 2016, she won the Fumiko Hayashi Literary Prize for "The Island on the Side of the Sun"; and in 2020, she won the Akutagawa Prize for A Horse from Shuri. Her works include Where I Was, "Come Gather 'Round, People," and Lenses in the Dark.

LK Nithya is a writer and literary translator from Japanese to English. She was a runner-up for the 2020 Harvill Secker Young Translators' Prize and attended the 2021 British Centre for Literary Translation Summer School. She lives in California.

Book Information
ISBN 9781913861988
Author Takayama Haneko
Imprint Strangers Press
Publisher UEA Publishing Project