Science Fiction

Life Ceremony

£12.99

From the author of international bestseller Convenience Store Woman comes a collection of short fiction: weird, out of this world and like nothing you’ve read before.

An engaged couple falls out over the husband’s dislike of clothes and objects made from human materials; a young girl finds herself deeply enamoured with the curtain in her childhood bedroom; people honour their dead by eating them and then procreating. Published in English for the first time, this exclusive edition also includes the story that first brought Sayaka Murata international acclaim: ‘A Clean Marriage’, which tells the story of a happily asexual couple who must submit to some radical medical procedures if they are to conceive a longed-for child.

Mixing taboo-breaking body horror with feminist revenge fables, old ladies who love each other and young women finding empathy and transformation in unlikely places, Life Ceremony is a wild ride to the outer edges of one of the most original minds in contemporary fiction.

The Wall of Sky, the Wall of Eye

£5.00

Jonathan Lethem again displays his brilliance in this collection of seven short stories, blurring the boundaries of sci-fi, mystery, and thriller. Tales include ‘Light and the Sufferer’, in which a crack addict is dogged by an invulnerable alien; ‘The Hardened Criminals’, wherein convicts are used as building blocks for new prisons; and ‘The Happy Man’, whose hapless protagonist is raised from the dead to support his family, only to suffer periodic out-of-body sojourns in Hell. Each tale features Lethem’s characteristic deadpan wit and unflinchingly macabre vision of life.