Sisters in Yellow

The Instant Sunday Times Bestseller

‘The most exciting Japanese novelist at work today’
– The Times

‘I can never forget the sense of pure astonishment I felt when I first read Mieko Kawakami’
– Haruki Murakami

A heart-stopping story of teenage girls on the brink in 1990s Tokyo from the International Booker Prize-shortlisted author of HEAVEN and BREASTS AND EGGS

Hana has nothing but she’s hopeful. She’s fifteen years old. She lives in a tiny apartment in Tokyo with her mother. They have no money, no security. Then the enigmatic Kimiko appears. She offers Hana a way out.

Together they set up Lemon, a shabby bar that becomes their haven. Suddenly Hana has a job she loves and friends to share her days with, but the glittering promise of money soon gives way to a dangerous world. Trapped between her own paranoia and the violence of the city's dark underbelly, Hana is forced to make choices that will echo throughout the decades to come.

A masterpiece of teenage dreams and adult cruelties, Sisters in Yellow confirms Mieko Kawakami as one of the great writers of her generation.


‘Relentlessly riveting . . . My heart felt very tender reading this’
– Frances Cha, author of If I Had Your Face


Readers love Sisters in Yellow:

'My new favourite book of ALL TIME. The ending absolutely destroyed me.'

'A powerful, emotionally charged exploration of friendship, survival and the quiet brutality of inequality'

'Mieko Kawakami doesn't need a high-speed chase to create tension; she lets a heavy, unsettling mood seep into the floorboards'

'Confirms Kawakami’s place as one of the most vital voices in contemporary literature'

'The character building is second to none . . . Mieko Kawakami is a generational talent'

'This is Kawakami at her best. Not for a second does the pace let up.'