Banana Yoshimoto s novels have established her as one of Japan s finest and most popular writers， and as an acclaimed and best-selling literary star all over the world. Now she delivers three novellas that develop her sophisticated， resonant， and artfully simple vision， in AsleepKitchen. Banana Yoshimoto has a nuanced and magical ability to animate the lives of her young characters， and here she spins the stories of three women， all bewitched into a spiritual sleep. One， mourning for a lost lover， finds herself sleepwalking at night. Another， who has embarked on a relationship with a man whose wife is in a coma， finds herself suddenly unable to stay awake. A third finds her sleep haunted by a woman whom she was once pitted against in a love triangle. Sly and mystical as a ghost story， with a touch of Kafkaesque surrealism， Asleep is an enchanting new book from one of the best writers in contemporary international fiction.