Gifted - Paperback

by Suzumi Suzuki (Author), Allison Markin Powell (Translator)

A subtle and intimate accounting of a daughter's final days with her mother, set amid the rush of Tokyo's red-light district.

Drawing on her own experiences as a hostess and adult film actor, Gifted--Suzumi Suzuki's first novel to be translated into English--offers a nuanced, frank, and intimate portrayal of the lives of a mother and daughter getting by (or not) in an industry rarely depicted authentically in literary fiction.

In the last days of her mother's life, a young woman living in Tokyo's red-light district is thrust into a split existence. By day, she negotiates her new role as caregiver of an abusive parent. By night, she drifts home from the hospital, goes out with other sex-workers, thinks about quitting smoking, and numbly remembers Eri, a friend who died the summer before. Her sensitivity to the details of her surroundings grounds an otherwise unstable world, one where each interaction requires a subtle negotiation of economic and sexual power, and proximity rarely means intimacy or connection. Gifted was nominated for the 167th Akutagawa Prize in 2022.

Author Biography

Allison Markin Powell is a literary translator, editor, and publishing consultant. She received the 2020 PEN America Translation Prize for The Ten Loves of Nishino by Hiromi Kawakami. Her other translations and co-translations include works by Osamu Dazai, Kanako Nishi, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, and Kaoru Takamura. She maintains the database Japanese Literature in English.