Ms Ice Sandwich

New edition of this witty, moving story of adolescent love and loss from the acclaimed, prize- winning author of Breasts and Eggs .

Thoroughly enjoyable and desirable... beautifully told... Gentle, funny, moving and elegantly translated by Louise Heal Kawai, it is a rare treat

Among many other awards, Haruki Murakami listed Mieko Kawakami as his favourite young writer, so you're obviously going to want to snatch up Ms Ice Sandwich, her first book translated into English. This is a lovely coming-of-age story about a boy who becomes obsessed with a woman who sells sandwiches

Easily digestible... a book that ultimately lives longer in the memory than the hour or so it takes to read

Mieko Kawakami is always ceaselessly growing and evolving

Whimsical... Described as Haruki Murakami's "favorite young novelist," Kawakami is destined to charm Anglophone audiences as well

In Louise Heal Kawai's translation the novella is a wonderful example of the power of narrative voice

The narrator's perspective is so singular and well-crafted that Ms Ice Sandwich's message about the ephemerality of human connection is never in any danger of becoming trite and sentimental

A refreshing tale of understanding and acceptance... validates the talent of the author and makes it a good introduction to Mieko Kawakami's universe

A warm, heart-melting story... a treat

A delightful distraction, and an appetiser for her work

A deftly written, unusual tale... never sentimental... a thought provoking and deeply satisfying read

A touching novella... Ms Ice Sandwich interrogates what it means to love and lose

A funny, touching story

Reading this quirky coming of age novella was one of the best hours I've spent in sometime

Delightful... Kawakami's dialogue, fluidly rendered into English by Louise Heal Kawai, captures beautifully and with great humor the eager dynamism of a child's mind

Born in Osaka prefecture in 1976, Mieko Kawakami began her career as a singer and songwriter before making her literary debut in 2006. Her first novella My Ego, My Teeth, and the World, published in 2007, was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize and awarded the Tsubouchi Shoyo Prize for Young Emerging Writers. The following year, Kawakami published Breasts and Eggs as a short novella. It won the Akutagawa Prize, Japan's most prestigious literary honour, and earned praise from the acclaimed writer Yoko Ogawa. Kawakami's work has been widely translated, and she is the author of the novels Heaven, The Night Belongs to Lovers, and the newly expanded Breasts and Eggs, her first novel to be published in English. She lives in Japan.