Under the Eye of the Big Bird - Novel

Translated by Asa Yoneda

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In the distant future, humans are on the verge of extinction and have settled in small tribes across the planet under the observation and care of the Mothers. Some children are made in factories, from cells of rabbits and dolphins; some live by getting nutrients from water and light, like plants. The survival of the race depends on the interbreeding of these and other alien beings – but it is far from certain that connection, love, reproduction, and evolution will persist among the inhabitants of this faltering new world.

Unfolding over geological eons, Under the Eye of the Big Bird is at once an astonishing vision of the end of our species as we know it and a meditation on the qualities that, for better and worse, make us human.

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Praise:

"No other book of hers convinces me more that Kawakami used to be a teacher of chemistry. A sad but beautiful depiction of a perishing world" - Banana Yoshimoto

"There's real satisfaction in figuring out how the chapters connect, and all are richly imagined" - George Cochrane, Telegraph

"Haunting... it offers a powerful corrective to the assumption of human primacy" - James Bradley, Guardian