About The Book

An actress’s mysterious, scandalous death leads her younger sister, a kid brother with mystical powers, and her fiancé  on a sorrow-filled journey through grief, redemption, and recovery that takes them to a final confrontation with the spirits of the dead on a remote Pacific island.

Praise for Amrita:

“Ms. Yoshimoto has an effortless ability to penetrate her characters’ hearts.” —New York Times Book Review

“Banana Yoshimoto is a master storyteller . . . The sensuality is subtle, masked, and extraordinarily powerful. The language is deceptively simple.” —Frank Ramirez, Chicago Tribune

“Entering Banana Yoshimoto’s fictional world is a little like living as an expatriate in Tokyo—everyday things are disconcertingly different. The exotic lurks around every corner . . . What sets Yoshimoto apart, though, is her blunt candor, a sense that truth, no matter how odd or awkward, is more important than polish . . . Amrita is difficult to forget.” —Janice P. Nimura, San Francisco Chronicle

“Yoshimoto’s most fully realized work to date . . . Her firm grasp of her characters, her surefooted prose and her wide-eyed exploration of everything from American pop culture to the Japanese language make this one of the most satisfying books of the summer.” —Ben Greenman, Time Out New York

“This endearing, exasperating novel, which follows Yoshimoto’s Lizard, will surely fit in any collection where contemporary fiction circulates well.” —Janet Ingraham, Library Journal

“Yoshimoto knows the remedial potential of a good, old-fashioned narrative . . . Her characters are immersed in a youth culture that owes more than a little to our notoriously shallow, decadent fin de siècle. They sleep around, eat street ramen, and listen with pleasure to Nirvana, but their lives are also marred by old-fashioned timeless tragedy. They lose their jobs and marry unsuccessfully; the people they love die before their time . . . Yoshimoto have never been afraid of trauma.”—Diane Simon, The Nation