Booktopia has been placed into Voluntary Administration. Orders have been temporarily suspended, whilst the process for the recapitalisation of Booktopia and/or sale of its business is completed, following which services may be re-established. All enquiries from creditors, including customers with outstanding gift cards and orders and placed prior to 3 July 2024, please visit https://www.mcgrathnicol.com/creditors/booktopia-group/
Add free shipping to your order with these great books
Diary of a Void : A hilarious, feminist read from the new star of Japanese fiction - Emi Yagi

Diary of a Void

A hilarious, feminist read from the new star of Japanese fiction

By: Emi Yagi

Paperback | 11 August 2022

Sorry, we are not able to source the book you are looking for right now.

We did a search for other books with a similar title, however there were no matches. You can try selecting from a similar category, click on the author's name, or use the search box above to find your book.

A hilarious Japanese debut novel, where a young woman, thoroughly fed up with gendered expectations at work, announces she's pregnant. She's not.

Thirty-four-year-old Ms Shibata works for a company manufacturing cardboard tubes and paper cores in Tokyo. Her job is relatively secure: she's a full-time employee, and the company has a better reputation than her previous workplace, where she was subject to sexual harassment by clients and colleagues. But the job requires working overtime almost every day. Most frustratingly, as the only woman, there's the unspoken expectation that Ms Shibata will handle all the menial chores: serving coffee during meetings, cleaning the kitchenette, coordinating all the gifts sent to the company, emptying the bins.

One day, exasperated and fed up, Ms Shibata announces that she can't clear away her colleagues' dirty cups, because she's pregnant. She isn't. But her 'news' brings results: a sudden change in the way she's treated. Immediately a new life begins.

Written in diary form, Diary of a Void is an ironic and playful reference to the Japanese 'Maternal and Child Health Handbook' (Boshi Techo; the novel's original title), a notebook issued to all expectant mothers in Japan so they can record the details of their pregnancies and experiences of motherhood until their child is six years old. By turns hilarious and thought-provoking, Ms Shibata's diary of her fake pregnancy not only skewers universal patriarchal attitudes towards maternity and pregnancy, it also challenges the truth of conception on many levels.

For fans of Convenience Store Woman, Kim Jiyoung, Born in 1982, and The Vegetarian, this is a wonderfully witty and smart, feminist novel poking fun, but with serious intent, at the sanctity of motherhood, and how society superficially reveres mothers while conversely making actual parenting a sometimes disempowering and isolating experience without the right support.

About the Author

Emi Yagi was born in 1988, and is currently a corporate employee and an editor. Diary of a Void is her first novel, and it won the 36th Dazai Osamu Prize, awarded annually to debut writers.

More in Fiction in Translation

Until August : The Lost Novel - Gabriel Garcia Márquez

RRP $35.00

$31.75

The Master And Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov

RRP $11.95

$8.75

27%
OFF
Solo Leveling, Vol. 1 : Light Novel - Chugong

FREE SHIPPING

RRP $27.99

$22.50

20%
OFF
The Premonition - Banana Yoshimoto

RRP $29.99

$29.95

Killing Moon : The NEW Sunday Times bestselling thriller - Jo Nesbo
The Survivors : Karen Pirie - Alex Schulman

RRP $32.99

$30.25

I Went to See My Father : The instant Korean bestseller - Kyung-Sook Shin
The Boy and the Dog - Seishu Hase

RRP $32.99

$30.25

The Wolves of Eternity - Karl Ove Knausgaard

RRP $34.99

$31.75

Juja - Nino Haratischvili

Paperback

RRP $32.99

$30.25

The Mantis - Kotaro Isaka

Paperback

RRP $34.99

$31.75

The Preacher : Patrik Hedstrom : Book 2 - Camilla Lackberg

RRP $22.99

$21.90