Every few years she moves from one place to another with Soko in tow, afraid that if she gets too comfortable and begins to blend with her surroundings he will never find her. Without him by her side, Yoko feels like she doesn’t belong anywhere. But he has disappeared and has been gone for nearly a decade, promising that one day he will return for her.

There are three things that she counts as true treasures in her life: piano, Soko, and Soko’s father.

To make ends meet, Yoko teaches piano and works at bars and restaurants. She left her husband soon after Soko was born as the result of a passionate love affair. Yoko Najima lives alone with her young daughter Soko. I wish that more of Ekuni’s work was available in translation her writing is excellent. However, she doesn’t seem to be very well-known among English-reading audiences, which is a shame. Ekuni is a respected author in Japan and has won several prestigious awards for her work. The English translation of God’s Boat by Chikako Kobayashi was released in 2012 by Thames River Press, a publisher based in the United kingdom. Later it was selected as a part of the Japanese Literature Publishing Project-an effort to promote the publication of modern Japanese works in translation across the globe. The novel was originally published in Japan in 1999. Sadly, God’s Boat is currently her only other major work to have been released in English. Because I enjoyed it to such a great extent, I made a point to seek out more of Ekuni’s work to read. One of my favorite books that I’ve read in the past few years is Kaori Ekuni’s debut and award-winning novel Twinkle Twinkle.

Twinkle twinkle ekuni kaori