Book Description
A time-bending story of love, desire, and destiny that sways between Japan’s past and its present—from a courtesan of Yoshiwara in Edo to a serving lady of the Heian period to a wife and mother in the twenty-first century—by one of our most brilliant and sensitive contemporary novelists
Having married her childhood sweetheart, Riko now finds herself trapped in a relationship soured by infidelity. One day, she runs into her old friend Mr Takaoka, who offers friendship, love, and an unusual escape: he teaches her the trick of living inside her dreams.
Now, each night, she sinks into another life: first as a high-ranking courtesan in the seventeenth century, and then as a serving lady to a princess in the late Middle Ages. As she experiences desire and heartbreak in the past, so Riko comes to reconsider her life as a twenty-first-century woman—as a wife, as a mother, and as a lover—and to ask herself whether, after loving her husband and loving Mr Takaoka, she is ready for her third great love.
Praise For This Book
Time, A Most Anticipated Book of the Fall"Weaves historical fiction, Japanese literary icons, and meditations on love into a novel that’s remarkable on many levels." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Thanks to the book’s splendid dreamworlds, it unfolds at the scale of a saga . . . In the mystical, immersive novel The Third Love, heady dreams offer new insights into the waking world." —Meg Nola, Foreword Reviews
"The scintillating latest from Kawakami . . . Readers will be transported." —Publishers Weekly
