WINNER OF THE AKUTAGAWA PRIZE An exquisite, mysterious novelBooklistA work of great delicacyJessica Au, author of Cold Enough to SnowIn the summer of , as Germany slowly emerges from lockdown, a young Japanese woman studying in Göttingen waits at the train station to meet an old friend. Nomiya died a decade earlier in the Thoku tsunami, but he has suddenly returned without any explanation.The reunited friends share a past thats a world away from the tranquillity of Göttingen. Yet Nomiyas spectral presence destabilises something in the city: mysterious guests appear, eerie discoveries are made in the forest and, as the past becomes increasingly vivid, the threads of time threaten to unravel.With a literary style reminiscent of W. G. Sebald, Yoko Tawada, and Yu Miri, The Place of Shells is an astounding exploration of the strange orbits of memory and the haunting presence of the past.This attempt to imprint upon humanity the experiences of the Thoku earthquake and tsunami in a way that only a novel can achieve deserves to be highly esteemedYoko Ogawa, author of The Memory PoliceHere we find a form of language that attempts to venture, dancing, into a past enveloped in silenceYoko Tawada, author of The Last Children of Tokyo
